Nice defense of e-mail by Matt Blumberg of Return Path. I agree. There are definitely flaws in the medium, but efforts are underway (spam filtering, e-mail authentication, reputation services) that I think will make a big and positive impact. For person-to-person communications online, what else is there? There are instant messaging apps, for sure, and some suggest they will take on e-mail traffic. That’s a possibility, I suppose, but I think e-mail in its current incarnation (as seen from the end-user perspective) has become too important to abandon. Those who think it’s on its way out probably take it for granted to the extent that they don’t realize what life would be like without it.