Six Seconds.

That's how long current research tells us we are taking to answer emails, whether we are deep in conversation, in a meeting, on the phone or having sex as one reply put it. Paltry I say, as I watch my Blackberry for the next incoming email. One to three seconds is probably closer to the mark for most people as we stay obsessed with being connected every waking minute, sorry second. Email is the greatest survivor of the web history so far and has the ability to outlive any challenges thrown up against it.

I make the above point because there have been recent articles about the "death of emails" and I fail to see how that is even possible to consider. With 107 trillion emails sent last year, averaging 294 billion a day with nearly 2 billion email users worldwide on 3 billion email accounts, what could ever replace it? Mark Zuckerburg remarked that email would be a thing of the past, as he was launching Facebook's new messaging system, but even the millions on Facebook become insignificant when taking in the billions on email.

Sure young people are inclined to SMS and use anything more instant they can lay their hands on and spam still seems to rear it's ugly head as a filler of inboxes but the ubiquitous nature of email will see it survive the Facebook challenges along with future technology aimed at keeping us connected. Even Twitter with a substantial 25 billion tweets sent via 175 million users in 2010 is so far behind that email can't even see it in the rearview mirror.

One of the complaints that email isn't immediate enough seems to be a fallacy when you look at the title of this piece. How immediate are a few seconds? It's convenience can't be overlooked as 2 billion registered email users will attest to and the multitude of technology devices that can handle email is only limited to our imagination. Even spam has ceased to bug people the way it used to, considering the level of filtering now available. Without email, spam would just find another avenue. It is designed to follow users so Facebook should be pleased that email takes the brunt for them otherwise, you would be looking at home pages accosted by your favourite enlargement pharmaceuticals.

The slowest moving of all entities on the web, business, which accounts for 25% of all email accounts, would be in dire straights without email and there seems nothing on the horizon to replace it, unless there are competitors to Google and Microsoft intending to change our minds. Maybe the Chinese have something up their sleeves? As yet the majority of them haven't even tried email, so another billion or so will soon be online emailing their friends, doing business and generally communicating their thoughts.

As Mark Twain said a long time ago and this could easily refer to email today, "the news of my death has been greatly exaggerated".