The surge in e-commerce and the increasing popularity of electronic cards will result in an online deluge of virtual hearts, cupids and roses on Valentine's Day this year. A survey by Harris Interactive for BlueMountain.com states that online cards are expected to grow to 20 million this year - two million more than last year.
IT managers need to be aware of the resulting effect their company's increased use of bandwidth will have. Not only will it significantly slow down the delivery of that particular company's outgoing mails, but will also bring about a domino effect throughout the country. This may result in servers nationwide becoming overloaded with an unexpected heavy volume, causing serious delays in delivery and in the need for technicians to rebalance the load.
Typical e-mail attachments average at less than 100 kilobytes in size. Once colour, sound and animation have been added, as in many e-mail greeting cards, the attachment can be significantly larger than usual. This takes up an enormous amount of room on the computer system and can slow the delivery of other documents considerably.
"While the use of electronic greeting cards and digital cameras makes the Internet more valuable to consumers, it could also have serious ramifications," says Mike Wright, CEO of The E-mail Corporation in Johannesburg. "Companies need to apply an internal monitoring process in order to prevent costly down-time."
Online users seem to prefer the sending of virtual cards and messages. EMarketer.com recently released details of a survey of MatchMaker.com customers, stating that an overwhelming 75% of online adults use e-mail to flirt with a person they like and 50% feel more comfortable flirting via e-mail rather than face to face.
The study also reveals that the majority of people who flirt online do so at work: 24% of people spend 10 minutes; 16% spend at least 1 hour; and 10% spend over an hour per day flirting online at work.
"This raises serious concerns with regard to business productivity," says Wright. "Over the course of a year, companies lose a fortune as a result of the misuse of e-mail by their employees."
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