ISPs to Enforce New 500 Word Limit in Emails Starting January 1, 2014 The prevailing ideology in the world of email has historically been that spam is the biggest threat to email productivity. A recent 2012 study titled “The Economics of Spam†by Justin M. Rao (Microsoft Research) and David H. Reiley (Google Inc.) estimates that American firms and consumers experience costs of almost $20 billion annually due to spam. Other studies have estimated the costs even higher closer to the $50 billion mark. One of the big factors that goes into the cost of spam is lost productivity. If an employee spends 20 minutes a day weeding out spam from their inbox, and assuming an average hourly rate of $23.82 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Feb. 2013), the daily cost is $7.86. With 52 work weeks, this results in $2,043.60 per year. However, with advances in spam filtering technology, that number is expected to drop rapidly and a new enemy to email productivity has emerged. The new biggest problem: Long Emails We live in a society of 140 character tweets, 30 second video clips, quick SMS text messages, and fast status updates. Yet despite the global move towards brevity, emails can still be very long. This is the new economic challenge. Using the same calculations as before, we can see the direct effects this plague of long emails has in terms of productivity and dollars. A poll by Elite Email reveals that the average employee reports spending 90 minutes per day reading through long emails. This works out to a daily cost of $28.58 and a huge annual cost of $7,430.80. This clearly highlights that long emails pose a far greater threat than spam. The top ISPs of the world are jumping on this problem right away before it spirals out of control. Google (gmail), Yahoo, Microsoft (outlook/hotmail) and AOL have come together to form a new task force named U.S.A.P. (Unified Short Attention Span). These big four mail providers are not wasting any time and have already proposed new limits coming into effect on January 1, 2014. Starting in 2014, all emails will be limited to 500 words. Any words over that limit will not be displayed. The U.S.A.P. organization said, in its official statement: As of January 1, 2014, anyone composing a new email will see an alert when they exceed the 500 word email limit. The new restrictions have received a lot of support from the internet community. While many recognize the limit as harsh, the global consensus is that desperate times call for desperate measures and this is precisely what we need. Is your organization going to be ready to work within the new 500 word limit? Many consultants have started running seminars at larger organizations in an effort to treat the condition known as “digital verbal diarrheaâ€, which is the key driver behind long-winded emails. One consultant we interviewed said: At Elite Email, we firmly believe that these new restrictions will usher in a new era of responsible emailing that will boost productivity in one big swoop. We fully support the initiative by U.S.A.P. as a big step forward in global digital communication. Furthermore… since our crash, seeing how we lost April 1st officially, it was a pleasure to bring it back. Happy April Fools’ Day (one month later) Source: http://blog.eliteemail.com/
There is a time and place for everything. The time for April Fools jokes is on April 1, not a month later. Elite Email are just being annoying.
