Two strange things happened? on Tuesday at least for me. One, Google was down ?and I could not access my mails and two I received a letter from Post Office.? I know you are already asking what is the big deal with receiving a letter? ?Well let me ask you when is the last time you received a letter which is not bank statement, a bill, a parcel , a dividend check or insurance expiry notice? A letter which is purely from someone, or when did you last write? a letter to someone?
After reading the letter I started thinking about role of Post Office and how Technology came in and killed what was once a vibrant Organization.? May be it is too early to declare obituary for the Kenya Postal corporation but there are a number of reasons why I am calling it dead:
- Since nobody sends social letters anymore, the Postal corporation business is in downward spiral, even the company to company communication is now purely on emails and phone calls. Social media is also looming large and in the recent past I have seen back and forth communication between @SeacomLive and bloggers, @KenyaAirways and bloggers, @NSEKenya and Bloggers all in Twitter. A clear indication that Kenyan companies are embracing social media
- The decision by Safaricom last month to use internet for communication and to pay shareholders dividends through ?M-Pesa as means of cost cutting, could mark completely a new beginning in the way companies in Kenya communicate with their shareholders. ?To say the truth, emails are delivered faster, and a company can send more at a cost of one or zero. The time saving factor is not even considered here. Kengen, one of the company’s with big shareholder registries has in the past spent over Ksh25 million on annual reports alone, using a further Ksh17 million on postage to 250,000 shareholders. If you are? Kengen CEO, you are probably thinking why not go the Safaricom way to save over Ksh30 million. I think it will be interesting to watch how this unfold in the coming years but one thing is sure, the future of Posta? is not helped any little bit by all these.
- I also wanted to check out how Posta is fairing in terms of adapting in the new high tech environment. Started by checking if they have a website, when I typed posta.com, that took me to tumbleweed communications, when I typed posta.co.ke, that took me to Bad Request( Invalid Host Name). So I returned to Google but still I could only find Kenya Post Bank website, so I gave up. My very good old Posta probably doesn?t have a website. So tell me, do you still see any future for this organization?
Back to Gmail being down. Server Maintenance! Yes, that is the reason why you could not access your email on Tuesday. ?During maintenance Google said they had underestimated the load which the recent changes they had made,? placed on the request routers /servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail servers for response. At the end ?there was overload and Google apologized for that.
“We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there’s a problem with the service,” said Ben Treynor ?in a blog post