Email has been around for a few decades and in the last decade it hasn’t changed very much from its original structure. The nature of email is that it’s a person-to-person communication, which serves most users just fine, except when trying to communicate between a group. Email messages pile up and it becomes difficult to figure out who communicated what message and when. In that case what you really need is more akin to a digital bulletin board or, as the tech industry has begun to call it within the last few years, a collaborative workspace.
Collaborative workspace enables many users to view, make changes, and add comments to a document, page, or idea. (Google Wave and Zenbe Shareflow are examples of collaborative workspace programs.) The problem with many of these programs is that they don’t integrate very smoothly with email, at least not yet. You’re still left with two inboxes to check and it necessitates that everyone in the group needs to agree to use the same program. Then all of the users needs to sign-up and learn how this new program works, which can be problematic.