Email will last forever
I find it interesting to contrast 'forever' with another technology that will last forever 'vinyl records'. I expect there will always be point to point, store and forward communication channels, but those channels have existed for millenia, from travelers who stacked rocks to tell those who came after where the trail was, to people who send compromising photos of themselves across cellular networks. So if we set aside the tautology for a moment, communication channels get morphed into a solution for a particular need, regardless of how well they service that need, and when there is a particularly wide disparity between need and implementation, there is an opportunity to create a better channel.<p>My current favorite example is Trello as a way of communicating activity status from many to many on many projects. Something email does poorly (but has been used for in the past) and Trello does brilliantly.<p>But lets look at the points one by one.<p><i>#1 everyone has an email address</i> -- sure today they do, and 25 years ago nobody did, and 25 years from now its possible everyone will have a "fooservice" address.<p><i>#2 email is flexible</i> -- see my point above, flexing is not the same as serving.<p><i>#3 other stuff is great for professional communication but we still use email.</i> -- and before that inter-office memos.<p>I get that these guys (Front) are invested in email sticking around but I would note that putting an adapter layer in front of it is no more, nor less, efficient than putting an adapter layer in front of TCP/IP or smoke signals or a 45 year old text file transfer protocol, whether or not "email" in the form of SMTP will survive should be irrelevant to Front, the question should be will the need for their service survive.