Communication has always been and always will be a vital part of our existence. Without communication society will surely cease to exist. A wonderful thing about communication is that it isn't stagnant. As technology advances so do methods of communication. Traditionally people communicated by speech, body movements, signs, and even through writing. With the advent of newer devices the traditional methods of communication though left intact evolved in such a way that fostered faster and more efficient communication between people far from each other.

Before the advent of the internet the telephone and the radio served as the means for verbal communication between two people far from each other. On the other hand letter writing and telegrams served as the means for written communication. For such a long time people were content in having the mail as the means for getting their messages to one another mostly because there was no faster alternative. People had to wait for days even weeks to receive a written reply from the person they wrote to. Of course as soon as the internet emerged and people began to discover the potential and power of the electronic mail, or email, traditional mail, or snail mail as it is now called, waned in popularity.

The coming of the email ushered in a new era for communication. With email people were able to receive messages halfway around the world instantly and thus get a reply in a few minutes. Though many people, especially those of the older generation, were hesitant in using the new technology at first, just after a few tries the evidently whopping benefits of email soon converted the masses so that nowadays almost everyone has an email address.

The email itself soon began to evolve pretty fast. People now use the email not just to write ?letters? to each other but to send large file attachments containing all kinds of information from family pictures to scanned copies of important documents. People also stopped writing really long messages and started sending short but relevant ones and ended up having conversations via email.

With the use of email continuously evolving and expanding, email providers started cropping up and offered various services for email users. Nowadays there is such as thing as email forwarding, email fax and voice services, email alerts and reminders, email newsletters, web-based email, POP3 email, and even a live chat within the email page (offered by Gmail). The really cool thing about email providers is that with the very healthy competition, email providers are finding newer and better ways to serve email users. Aside from this a lot if not most email providers also offer free email services and just charge for additional features the user might want to access. Other email services even offer ALL their features completely for free.

Despite the newer communication technologies emerging such as live chat and internet telephony the email is still sure to remain the number one method for written communication for some time. With the way email is evolving it will stay relevant and will still suffice as the fastest way for written communication.