From the perspective of many users, email is still a pretty useful and reliable service. But looking at all email traffic, we understand that what we call “email” is actually a tiny part of a huge network of zombie computers designed with one goal: to forcefully advertise products to unwilling recipients.

According to the latest reports, 94% of e-mail in December was spam.

Think about it. If your phone rang a hundred times a day, and only 6 calls were actual calls and not people trying to sell you stuff you don’t need, would you use it? Would you invent clever ways to recognize fake calls and only answer the real ones, or would you give up and move to another way of communicating?

Sure, we do have clever spam filters which make email bearable for us. We don’t notice the 94% of spam - we’re smart and we know how to recognize what’s good and what’s useless. But aren’t we wasting time with it? Email isn’t particularly fast. It’s not even particularly versatile. It’s not secure. It’s not good for sending large files. Why do we use it, then?

Well, since it’s embedded into the Internet on the protocol level, it’s still universally considered two things: reliable and official. Unfortunately, the first argument doesn’t really stand anymore, while the second is only in our minds. How can something be reliable if 94% of it is crap? Email is usually delivered, but even this is not a given. Emails can be faked, addresses spoofed, they can be delayed, the mail server can die and the messages may never reach the destination. Can you imagine a service that has the same level of reliability, or even better? Plenty. Most P2P networks are just as reliable.

Lastly, email is only considered “official” because we think of it that way. A usual conversation in the office starts with “Hey can you…” and ends with “OK, just send me an official email”. Why not an IM? Well, because it’s not official then. I fail to see the difference. But nevermind - even if we keep on thinking of email as the official way of internet communication, this doesn’t stop us at trying new methods. Instant messaging was accepted well; some other service in the future might also be accepted well.

So, what’s my alternative? Web 2.0. It’s about two important things - moving to the Web as a platform, and social networking. This means that we’re not bound to use old Internet protocols. And it means that we are enabled to communicate in many different ways. By its definition, it will make email obsolete.

Should we completely leave email behind? No. It still offers a way to identify yourself. It can be faked, yes, but it does give you a vast amount of credibility over being simply anonymous on the web. That’s why almost all Web 2.0 services require an email for registration. I’ve got an email address pointed out on this site, but it’s not for communication. It’s for identification and initializing communication. If I really want to communicate with someone, I use Meebo. Or Campfire. Email is good for letting me know that you exist, but it sucks for communication. But, I won’t stand in your way. If you like, you can still keep using email. It’s going to be you, 5 of your friends and 94 spammers in a small room. I’m moving on to something better.