Can the Post Office Survive the Digital Age?

An article earlier this year asked, "Is email killing the post office?" Well, the post office is not dead yet, but it's not helping from the looks of it. The U.S. Postal Service doesn't have the money it needs to pay its bills, and email and the web are clearly major factors.

Can the post office survive the digital age? 

A report from the New York Times is all but predicting the U.S. Postal Service's demise. "The agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances," the report says.

"If Congress doesn't act, we will default," Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe is quoted as saying.

When the subject was discussed , Bloomberg BusinessWeek had put out a lengthy report looking at the decline of the USPS and its contributing factors. While touching on email, it looked more at comparison of USPS performance versus that of FedEx, UPS and DHL, as well as their international counterparts.

Despite talk that social media might one day kill email, email has proven time and time again that it is still a vital part of the Internet. A report from Pew Internet recently found that email (along with search) is the top activity online adults engage in on the web - way more than social media (though that's growing significantly).