What are the tasks emails are being used for?

Annoy as many people as you can with mail they didn’t ask for advertising a product they’re not interested in.

•To send unencrypted information between terrorist cells coordinating attacks on infidels, letting it stay on public servers for a long time, naming people and disclosing plans and intentions.
•Getting mail from Nigerian princesses.
•Sending nude images of oneself to people you like, so that they can spread them in school.
•Getting interesting porn links you never would have found yourself.
•Porn.
•Viagra pills, vaigra pills, via_gra pills, v*agra pills and other variants of pills.
•So that you know who to pay money in order to increase the size of your penis.

i use it to keep in touch with coworkers from other sites. i use it to communicate with my supervisor and other workers regarding work issues – it’s good for clarification and to have the answers documented in case of confusion. i use it to forward jokes to my friends – for me that’s a good way of showing people i’m thinking of them. i use it to write to friends occasionally, but more often, just writing to friends i use facebook. for just keeping in touch with coworkers from other sites (my first sentence) i don’t use facebook because not all my coworkers are on it.

At work, as a workflow. This is a terrible use of e-mail.

@oratio & @FutureMemory, I understand u r upset, however this was trying to get some serious feedback.

@gagara No, not upset. Didn’t really take the question seriously though. To me, it is as you would ask what you use the telephone for.

•To order stuff.
•To communicate with friends when I am not in Sweden.
•To tell someone what I feel.
•As online backup of various files.
•For online tickets
•For online receipts
•For some bills

@gagara, It would be helpful to have a little more detail as to why you want to know. Otherwise, the question reads as “Tell me the obvious.” E-mail’s been around for over 10 years and is a standard communication method for both business and personal communications.

@PandoraBoxx, you are right, perhaps the question was a bit ill posed. If it’s not too late, let me rephrase it – what are the broad classes of activities that people engage in, which essentially depend on using email? You are right, this is asking the obvious. The obvious, as you know, is most often most difficult to categorize or formalize. That’s why I ask this. I need this for a research project.

At work,
Work flow (bad use) with attachments to send work requests to others
Authentic or confirm oral communication
Replace meetings in situations where multiple people need problem awareness
Thank you notes
Routine departmental notification—copier down, meeting rescheduled, changes. This is usually done in subject line only, with EOM (end of message) at the end of the subject line to let the reader know that there’s nothing in the body of the message.
Out of office notification
Humor

Personal
Family/friend updates
Sending youtube.com or TED.com links to others
Send myself links to articles found on internet at home (send to work address)
Communicating travel arrangements for children
Make social plans

@oratio & @FutureMemory, I understand u r upset, however this was trying to get some serious feedback.

I’m not upset at all, and I’m serious about my response. If you had said “positive uses” I would have responded differently :)