CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam.  That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

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Considering that most emails are either news bits (could be posted to a Facebook wall or other asynchronous method), or rapid fire conversations (more suited to IM), this seems like a smart move. But because people are creatures of habit, the ending of email needs to be a top-down mandate. I wonder how the email-restricted workers feel about this?