Market Share For Email and Search Providers ( Business Statistics)

This post could be called Email 2 since we have just posted a review of a major business book on email: SEND: The Essential Guide to Email For Office and Home by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe. Some statistics on Business usage of email should be useful.

Ferris Research has tracked business email usage. For example they estimate 6 trillion non spam email messages by businesses per year. The average message is 10 kilobytes; however 5% are bigger than 1 megabyte (power point presentations, excel spreadsheets, etc.). With emphasis on collaborative uses of email, these large usages will increase. Ferris also estimates 25 billion business messages worldwide every day. Greater than 75% of messages sent are spam. A typical business user receives 600 messages a week. Ferris estimates a 35 billion dollars cost per year in trying to combat email spam, resulting in great losses in productivity (time spent in reading and deleting spam). So as email has become a great business tool, spam has become its costly byproduct.

Most large businesses use client based email servers utilizing security procedures and firewalls to deter electronic attacks. A major client based email program is Microsoft Exchange, used by larger businesses, universities, and government entities. Dealing with spam and potential electronic attacks is a costly business.

Pew Internet and American Life Project has compiled industry statistics on who uses the internet and what for. In their report on demographics of Internet users, they find 70 % of sampled adults use the Internet and that the breakdown for men and women as users is nearly equal, 73% for Women, 77% for Men. The highest percentage of users are between 18 and 64. This also conforms to working years of most populations. 70% of adults sampled use the internet and 60% use it to send and receive email; 49% use a search engine to find information; 39% to read news and 30% to consult the weather. A May 2008 Pew Study found 73% adults using the internet and 92% sending and receiving email; 89% of this sample used a Search Engine to find information. (Go to the highlighted Pew site to view these studies and breakdowns). Obviously there are differences in the adults sampled as the May study is much higher in overall usage. Tracking usage is still in its early stages. Yet these studies show high reliance on the internet both for email and information found through search engines.

MarketShare is a company that tracks usage for browsers and search engines. While Microsoft had nearly 70% marketshare compared to 21% for Firefox. Google Chrome which is a few months old has already attained 1% share bypassing Opera and many other browsers. MarketShare also tracks search engine usage. Google is dominating with 81%; Yahoo is next with 10%, AOL 2% and Microsoft Live with 1.58% share. In free email usage Yahoo claims over 250 million users, Microsoft about 220 million, and GMail about 7 million users. Yahoo is still a strong contender in the email market.

All these figures indicate the widespread significance of email as a central means of communication for all adults; search engines as major providers of information and access to information; and browsers as the main (free) tool in accessing the internet, search and email. For business there is a significant cost to maintaining email systems, which now have become mobile as well. It is a central tool and must be managed consciously for any business to survive and be productive.

Email: Benefit or Curse ( Book Review )

Has your Email got you down?

A few days ago a patron asked me to take a look at her computer. Her Email wasn't working. She opened her email and showed me the "inbox". There were over 600 messages there. Also there were over 600 messages in the "trash" file. Other factors were involved in "the crash" she was experiencing. We had to "reboot" the computer and got things going again. I suggested she might want to "empty the trash" file and to try to delete as many of the 600 messages in her "inbox" as possible.

The above story is common for anyone with email accounts. Think how Michael Brown, then director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA ) felt when the following email exchanges between him and his staff were revealed. These exchanges were at the height of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

"To FEMA Staff
August 29, 2005
Are you proud of me? Can I quit now? Can I go home?"
"To FEMA Staff
August 29, 2005
If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire, you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god."
"To FEMA Staff
August 30, 2005
I'm not answering that question, but do have a question. Do you know of anyone who dogsits?"

These embarassing exchanges are revealed in David Shipley and Will Schwalbe's cautionary tale and critique and guide to everything email, SEND: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home. Shipley is OpEd page editor for the New York Times; Schwalbe, editor in chief for Hyperion Books.

Essential is, for once, not hollow hyperbole. The authors estimate 25 % of the business day is taken up by email. Trillions of email messages go back and forth every day. Email is part of Business and Government Records Retention programs. President Bush and his administration will be delivering 100 million electronic messages to the National Archives; President Clinton's was 32 million messages. There are many existing legal cases where Company Email is part of the discovery process. Email was notable in Enron and Arthur Andersen cases. Current and past Presidents have sought to prevent access by claiming "executive privilege".

Here's what's covered in SEND: "Why do we email so Badly. When Should We email. Anatomy of an email. How to write ( the perfect ) email. Six essential types of email. Email that can land you in jail. S.E.N.D ( Simple, Effective, Necessary, Done ). The last word. How to read your header (Appendix). Email in all its manifestations is covered -- from the silly to the very serious. This book is a comprehensive account of do's and don'ts; a true manual and guide. It is not a "preachy" ettiquete book. It is highly enligtening and often humorous in its presentation of its subject. The authors do not exempt themselves from falling into the trap of misguided communications. They put their discussion into context behind the emergence of this important tool and differentiate between other forms such as instant messaging ( IM ), chat and the evolution of mobile emails ( Blackberries ) dominating business life 24/7. In fact email seems to have taken over many lives and made once private communication open and public.

The need to prioritize, to discuss access, the fact that one receives email from total strangers, who in the Facebook and MySpace and LinkedIn generation become your "friends". Every manager must decide how to handle email. Anything in email transactions must thought of as "public". Effective time management requires an email policy. In fact email may give one the illusion of getting things done, but production is elsewhere.

So, if you find yourself in the email mire or are trying to work out effective policies, SEND will be an essential guide for you. In fact anyone entering the email world will beneft from this book. Probably one of the most useful Business books of 2008 or anytime. Along the way you learn the history of email ( much older than the world wide web ), how email in fact works in the internet, and many true life illustrations of what is right and what is wrong about email In fact you may want to make this book required reading for your business, employees and managers. Besides its obvious utility, there is a bonus: it is a most enjoyable read!