Why Social Collaboration is Better than Email

As a social business consultant working with companies to implement internal social business initiatives I run into many of the same questions at every company where I'm working.  One of those questions is always "I get my job done just fine using email.  Why do I need to change something that works well for me?"  Sometimes that question comes from the rank and file, sometimes it comes from one of the company leaders.  I'm always glad to hear the question voiced because even if it's not getting voiced I know some people are thinking it.  If the question is voiced I get a chance to directly address it in conversation.

 
Here are some of my reasons why collaborating is much better served using social business tools rather than email:

1. Email is where knowledge goes to die.*  If I have a question and email the person who I think knows the answer, I may get an answer from that person, but I'm the only person who benefits from the answer.  Odds are that the person who answered the question, being a SME, has to answer the same questions quite frequently.  If, instead of asking the question via email in a 1:1 situation, I ask the question in a community, the same SME can answer the question once, everyone in the community can benefit from the answer at the time, and future community members can benefit from the answer later because the knowledge has been captured and becomes searchable and findable.  In contrast I can't search anyone else's email box.
2. I broaden my scope when I ask a question in a community rather than via email.  I can only know so many people.  So when I ask a question via email I'm limiting myself to potential experts.  Often times the two people I send my email to don't know the answer and so they pass it on to two more people who pass on to the three people who are able to answer my question.  That takes time.  By asking a question in a community I automatically broaden my scope of potential experts and can get a faster, potentially better answer than I would have received via email.
3. Attachments.  How many times have you started iterating on a document someone sent to you via email only to find out it's not the latest version?  By always saving the latest version in the proper community, editing it there, and getting notified of edits via your activity stream you no longer have to worry about multiple version of docs floating around out there.
4. The multiple tree branched email.  Someone starts an email with a long distribution list.  Someone hits reply to all and responds.  Someone else hits reply to all to the original email.  Thus starts the genesis of the multi-branched email thread where you have to track which version of the email you've read and which ones you need to respond to.  By keeping the conversation in a microblog conversation or discussion you keep it single threaded and always know to what you are responding.  Better yet, you get updates in your activity stream so you don't have to check for when there's something new.
5. Subscription Model.  Community members can subscribe to topics or areas of interest, rather than getting spammed by being on an email distribution list.**

 
What else would you add? 


*This is a quote from Bill French in a 2003 blog post about portal technology that was one of my favorites.  Alas, the blog post is no longer live.
**Thanks to my brilliant friend @mor_trisha for this one.