True, which is probably why google put im right next to the message viewer in gmail. I know of many ocassions where a flurry of emails turned into an im session.
I think gmail's "conversations" are really the first try at what I'm talking about, a new front end on email, but I don't think they work well enough personally. And they haven't really expanded well on the concept recently.
1) incredibly poor rollout strategy (imo)
2) what problem did it actually solve again?
forgive any appearance of snark; i just wanted to be concise, and i don't think that "the ideal marriage between email and IM" is something that people were - or are - desperately crying out to have.
I believe it failed in part because of the slow rollout (nobody you cared about had access yet) and lack of interop with email for notifications about changes, etc. I tried using it, and gave up. By the time it became widely available most of the early adopters gave up as well.
I think gmail's "conversations" are really the first try at what I'm talking about, a new front end on email, but I don't think they work well enough personally. And they haven't really expanded well on the concept recently.