"The inspiration for this blog post was a discussion with Chris White and others over on FriendFeed (http://friendfeed.com/e...). The discussion centered around the merits of email, Twitter and other forms of communication. In the middle of the discussion, Chris asked: If you had to choose one medium of digital communication, which one would you choose? Well that, of course, got a good round of arguments. And it’s a good question." - Daniel J. Pritchett

I'm still sticking with Twitter. - Daniel J. Pritchett

With email mailing lists with public archives, the public aspect of Twitter is not a differentiator. Email is one of the original gangsters of digital communication and is my medium of choice. - Mark Trapp

Touching. - Todd Hoff

Pssh, nearly all emails are private. Nearly all Tweets are public. If you want to redefine email to be public because suddenly we're all using Google Groups to communicate in the open, sure... email. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Without actual statistical information on the ratio of private to public email (or Tweets), saying "nearly all emails are private. Nearly all Tweets are public" is a vacuous statement. Even if you had that information, it doesn't affect the ability of email to be used in a public way. Google groups is not the only way (in fact, Google groups is from Usenet, not email). Majordomo, Listserv, Listproc, Mailman, Smartlist, et al have been around since email has been around, and it's incredibly easy to make email public because of it. - Mark Trapp

I've decided to go have a nice lunch and spend time in the gym rather than counter. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Oooh, hmmm. Email. But secretly I want to say Twitter. I hate email, yet can't imagine living without it. - Sarah Perez

Please don't make me choose! Oh, I know. *pretends not to see this* - Mona Nomura

For all its flaws, it still has to be email. - Richard Akerman

Email. No Contest. It's been part of my life for over 20 years. Still the basic cornerstone of my communications. - Ian May

Email, I get more useful information from email. - Steven Cains

IM all the way, I can't stand e-mail - Bjorn Stromberg

By far email... through GMail :-) - Maria Reyes-McDavis

Email for sure - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Email hands down. Although, if all the different IM networks were all connected with each other, that might sway me - Ray Metzen

This may not be an option but I'll take my cell phone. Then I can call someone and talk in person (next best thing to being there) and I can also use SMS if I want. - Kenton

Email. Free wins. Other things are free but not as full featured. - Franklin Pettit

Blog. Why? Because my blog goes into Google, goes into Google Reader, goes onto FriendFeed, gets retweeted into Twitter, and gets emailed around. So, I hit all the above from my blog. - Robert Scoble

Can I have dibs on high-speed internet? - Phil G

If I had to choose between email and phone, I'd still choose email. The phone is a PITA, very disruptive, inefficient, and time-wasting. Yes, I love talking to people, but when *I* want to. - Ian May

If I could remake both services then I'd take "public by default" email over "more than 140 characters" Twitter. Unfortunately I don't think the decentralized nature of email really lends itself to that plan nearly as well as does Twitter's microblogging monopoly. - Daniel J. Pritchett

@Mark Trapp: I realize that GGroups is largely a usenet wrapper. What I was referring to is the fact that it's also a dead-simple way to start up a free mailing list that can also work as a searchable forum with the flip of a switch. If more email was done this way rather than the usual point to point stuff it would be a lot closer to twitter. - Daniel J. Pritchett

Morse code. - ·[▪_▪]·

Wow - impressed with all the responses. Even more impressed that email scored so highly. And this is why email is still so hard to dislodge! So be it, good to know. - Hutch Carpenter

IM . . . hands down winner. - Lindsey is Fierce!

e-mail for sure. - Aram Zucker-Scharff

It would have to be G-Mail specifically. Without it I would not be able to work (my work is very email and attachment centric), and I can get it on my G1 on the go with a few bells and whistles intact. - Adrian

to make a quick and very dirty analogy... Twitter = all you can eat buffet / SMS = drive thru fast food / facebook = wedding buffet / email = restaurant with a waiter and menu - Adrian

@Adrian, I don't use any other client for mail than Gmail either. It runs fine on my Blackberry too, and none of this sync nonsense with other computers needed.. I pull it from my own domains so if there is ever a major outage with Gmail, I can switch to webmail as a last resort. - Ian May

Email - Grant Bierman

Adrian - Twitter is an all-you-can-eat buffet, but you pick what to put on the plate. - Hutch Carpenter

would wanna say something cool and different - and just looking at the amount of people I'm echoing made me just drop this comment the first time around when I wrote: email. - Peter Efland

email - you can get discussion groups, mailing lists, direct conversations etc. - Joelle Nebbe (iphigenie)

@Ian May nice setup! We use a Yahoo biz account, which we have automatically forwarded to Gmail. If there is a Gmail outage, I just pull up Yahoo Mail on the web (either on desktop or G1)... kinda awkward but it works and absolutely no need for the Exchange / Outlook / sync nonsense. CLOUD! - Adrian

@Hutch Carpenter yeah, my analogy really doesn't hold much water (but it sure was fun to come up with) - Adrian

+1 Adrian I know some folks get stuck with the Outlook/Exchange thing at work. I don't have that issue, so I don't need to use it at all. I did at one time a few years back and it was a PITA at times. There would always be some details on the office machine that I needed at home or vice versa - Ian May

@Ian May poor folks have er... "exchanged" their souls to the eDevil! Well... on the bright side at least they get a regular paycheck... I get paid when the clients feel like paying us (on a less than more regular schedule). - Adrian

Gmail - Steve Rubel

CELL PHONE - my 1 stop shop... I prefer human voice / relationship building over static email, etc - Susan Beebe

FriendFeed - Igor Poltavskiy

Email, though Twitter is taking up some of my 'com. time'. :-) - Kol Tregaskes