Why is email losing its appeal as a primary medium for many companies?

In addition to the widespread availability of better alternatives for many communication purposes,the indiscriminate use of email has lowered its appeal in the eyes of many professionals.In a sense,email is too easy to use-it's too easy to send low-value messages to multiple recipients and to trigger long message chains that become impossible to follow as people chime in along the way.And because it is such a general-purpose tool,email gets used for everything from critically important messages to automated updates and confirmations with little or no value.Email also suffers from an enormous problem with spam (unsolicited bulk email)and security risks such as computer viruses and phishing (fraudulent messages that prompt unwary users to divulge sensitive information or grant access to protected networks).Spam accounts for roughly half of all email,and requires great effort to keep it from flooding users' inboxes.