Is the Internet Intelligentsia Disconnected from the Enterprise World?
Did you know that Intelligentsia was a brand of coffee?
This week, an interesting discussion surfaced on FriendFeed. Paul Buchheit posted an article from Slate which claimed that Gmail has now surpassed Outlook in every aspect and proclaimed that Outlook has been destroyed by Gmail.
With such a provocative headline, naturally the Silicon Valley intelligentsia quickly chimed into the discussion. While the majority of the comments seem to pile on and proclaimed that Outlook is dead, thankfully many folks rightfully pointed out that comparing Gmail to Outlook is not an apples-to-apples comparison. It is more like comparing apples to… I don’t know, fish?
Gmail is a web application for email. Outlook is a collaboration platform. Both sides put forth their arguments. At the end of the day, there was no consensus after 75 comments and 187 likes. Just another day in FriendFeed land.
I love Gmail. I love Outlook. I love FriendFeed. At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to like what they want to like, and use what they want to use. Whatever. To each his own.
What I wonder about though, is this: How did this even become an article and a point of debate in the first place?
Gmail is a great web mail application for consumers.
At the office, my Outlook is tightly integrated to my Office Communicator which in turn is tightly integrated to our IP telephony systems. I can call a colleague over my IP phone directly from within Outlook and check her employee profile and internal social network by just right-clicking her name. I can create emails from events, create events from emails, create to-do items from emails, recall messages that have already been sent, and protect emails from being forwarded without my permission. My Outlook is so tightly integrated to my company’s CRM system that within Outlook I can see all of my sales prospects and existing opportunities, a graphical dashboard of my sales pipeline, and have the option to contact my customers them via voice or email all within a couple of clicks.
It will take Gmail years before it can do all of that. And even longer before Global 1000 companies will be convinced that keeping all of your sensitive email (your company’s lifeblood) on a 3rd-party server is a good thing.
And for a modern enterprise like where I work, what I described above really is the bare minimum I need to do my work effectively.
Yes, Gmail’s conversation view is nice (which Outlook has, by the way), and some may even argue that Gmail has a sleeker and more responsive interface (which I do agree).
However, I can’t believe that a marginally-superior user experience can result in sweeping statements in headlines such as, “How Gmail destroyed Outlook”.
Is the Internet intelligentsia, no doubt the author who penned the Slate article as well as the majority of folks who hang out on FriendFeed, so disconnected from the enterprise world?
The tools that work for a 30-strong startup or a new media web agency with six employees is vastly different than what works for a company with employees in the hundreds.
Is the Internet intelligentsia hanging out at all the popular social media destinations today really so under-represented by employees working in large enterprises that a service like Gmail, although no doubt a great application, is automatically thought of as superior to mature software created by companies that have a lot more experience than Google in creating software for enterprises?
If this disconnect is indeed real, does this bode well for those of us who sing praises to each other about the consumer Web 2.0 applications we use everyday, with the hope of seeing eventual workplace adoption of these tools?
I mean, we all love Twitter, but how do we know if microblogging really works better for group communication in the enterprise context? Is Yammer really gaining traction and proving itself in Fortune 500 companies?
Hey – we once again agree. There is a serious disconnect. If you translate the headline into reality it would more read like:
“Nobody (including Microsoft) cares for Outlook express anymore, so consumers use Online eMail and Gmail being the perceived champion”.
But such a headline would be boring. Giving them the benefit of a doubt: it looks like the topic wasn’t set with factual accuracy in mind but with the deliberate intention to stir controversy. Looking from that angle the post was spot on: controversy arose. eMail clients are only rivaled by cars and sports teams in their personal emotional attachment.
Yeah… what’s going on?
We’ve been agreeing on way too many things recently to be healthy.
Are we connected or socially disconnected…
I personally believe that technology has reduced our social capital—the relationships that bind people together and create a sense of community. Consequences include decreased civility, loss of behavioural boundaries and increased crime. We must find ways to deal with our profound loss of social connectedness.
Even though technological advances have contributed significantly to the problem of isolation, the emphasis on individualism in today’s society has compounded it.
I definitely can’t say I disagree, Didier.
On one hand, the wonders of social media and technology empowers us to reach out and interact with a potential online audience magnitudes wider than what was possible 5 years ago. Even the most introverted of individuals in real life today can be rockstars in the online realm.
But on the other hand, the oftentimes inhuman nature of online interactions makes us lose the empathy we need as human beings to bind people together and create the “social capital” that you stated.
Jason Calacanis recently blogged about this exact topic – about the loss of human empathy in this new online world. A good read, if you haven’t seen it yet.
http://calacanis.com/2009/01/29/we-live-in-public-and-the-end-of-empathy/