Survey on Messaging in the Internet

Abstract

The prevailing messaging service in the internet has always been the electronic mail. Despite multiple potential competitors have emerged since it started in early 1970’s, e-mail still has the highest share among users. The properties of e-mail and their major competitors are briefly reviewed in order to understand current challenges for e-mail. There are unconfirmed expectations for e-mail to weaken its position primarily among young generations. Therefore, prospects for a future for messaging services (not exclusively e-mail) are presented by results of a small-scale poll among more than 200 messaging users in universities.