Answer Guy Central

Dealing with me can be a bit like taking a blow from a sledgehammer to the side of your head. I’m going to tell you what I think, and while I go to sometimes ridiculous and unneeded lengths to see every side of a story, once I get to “my place”, I dig in, and invite those around me into my foxhole.

It’s about control. We all want to be in charge of our stuff. The question is, how do you do it?

Sometimes, you rant. But if you’re looking to create business change and you choose the rant route, you’d better have an ultra-clear handle on what you’re ranting about or your business change will fall flat and you’ll look . . . well, foolish.

The position of social networking influencer is looking to me more and more like a pulpit for fools. And even very smart people are falling into the trap. Today, Henry Blodget of Business Insider went off on a rant about the way Gmail works. Notwithstanding the occasional gaffe, Henry’s a smart guy, and I have to admit that his complaint is one I’ve thought about a few times and have heard many people complain about.

But that was before social networking took the position it’s gained in the last couple of years, creating the beast that is Henry Blodget.

Henry’s complaint is about Gmail. Specifically, Henry doesn’t like the fact that that Gmail makes you look at your in-box as one big dumping ground without the ability to create folders to categorize and store your mail.

But Gmail has worked this way since day one. And since that day we’ve seen more and more tools that defy easy organization becomes parts of our every day lives. And you know what? They work better.

I’m about as organized as anyone, and if you were my client in the late eighties and early nineties and I was creating your systems integration environment at a time when almost nobody “got it” I hammered a “treat it like a filing cabinet” approach to computer document storage into your head. But e-mail doesn’t actually work very well when treated that way; you think you’re organizing things, but you’re really just hiding them.

It’s the reason that Google Wave is going to work. E-mail simply isn’t linear enough to treat as though it is. It’s the reason that so many people have now given up on e-mail entirely in favor of always communicating through their Twitter or Facebook social networking accounts. And with respect to the success he enjoyed on Wall Street, it’s the reason Henry Blodget matters to anyone today.

Business Change means accepting that change is . . . change. It means you go outside your comfort zone. Business Change means that you look at what’s changing and decide whether to adopt that change. And if you decide that a particular business change isn’t for you, you find another one.

But the way Gmail is is part of Google’s business strategy; it’s one in which we all use search all the time. It’s one where using search is the business change.

I’m disappointed in Henry Blodget. <<SLEDGEHAMMER BLAST>>

Is it time to dump e-mail?

My head hurts just thinking about that question. But as great as e-mail is, it has problems.

For one, e-mail is too linear. So while e-mail is great for communications that involve me sending you a message, you answering, and the subject either being considered addressed or me being able to ask the next question until the chain of e-mails reaches its logical conclusion, it’s limited.

And as much as I Hate Texting, I’ve come to realize lately that in cases like what I just described it’s just as effective as e-mail. There are storage issues to be addressed, but the linear nature and “answer when you’re ready” back-and-forth are of an identical mechanism in texting as in e-mail.

So maybe I hate e-mail as much as I hate texting.

A couple of weeks ago, Google added a new feature to GMail that at first made me think “a-ha!” and then made me realize that there’s a reason Google seems so much smarter than the rest of us. Now, you can have nested labels in your GMail inbox to organize your stuff in a way that resembles the way you nest folders in standard e-mail.

And as soon as I could do this thing that I’ve been wishing for I realized that it was best if I don’t. And Google explained why in the page linked above.

And they’ve explained it before, but up until now the explanation was just “it’s better our way”. Now, it’s more like “it’s better our way but while we’re finally ready to let you do it this is a business change that will be better left unused“.

Wow.

Let’s assume that not too many people who rely on Gmail are going to be all that interested in nested tags. OK, so Google is pandering to us in an attempt to gain greater adoption of Gmail and whatever other tools they can drag us into. Fine; business as usual.

What about people who have seriously stopped using e-mail? They really are out there, and in growing numbers; “I don’t care to keep a record and it’s already out there in the cloud anyway, so I’ll just use Twitter, Facebook, and other social networking sites to communicate“.

And so, we move on: the biggest business change of all as it relates to the issue of dumping e-mail is what we dump e-mail in favor of. And this makes me think for the first time in months about Google Wave. Is it ever going to be opened up for use by anyone who cares to figure it out?

Whether Google Wave, an existing social networking platform, or something else is the ultimate “winner”, it truly looks as though e-mail is on its last legs. This might be a tough business change to navigate, but it’s one you’re going to have to work through. And it’s time to start figuring out how.

Do you use Gmail? What about Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, or any of the other “free” e-mail options? Wait; you’re surprised by my use of quotes on the word free?

You’ve probably noticed that when you send e-mail using the services I mention they get appended with ads. You may have noticed that the ads are smart, too; they aren’t random, but refer to products or services that you and your correspondents might be interested in. Well, hold on to your hat:

Gmail, Google’s free, previously-by-invitation-only e-mail service, has a very cool new feature built in: if you use Gmail, when there’s a link to something stored in Google Docs, hovering over that link will pop up a preview of that document. Cool. A time saver. Real Business Change.

See what isn’t free here? While giving you something that makes your day just . . . a . . . bit . . . easier . . . , Google is also roping you into using Gmail, which, while the best of the bunch, is stored in their servers, controlled by them, etc. They’re sucking you in. Again.

I don’t wish to go off on Google for this, and I use their stuff everywhere, all the time. I do want you to keep in mind just what you give up if you blindly start using Google’s every new toy.

Have a great weekend!