Nielsen turns off "reply to all" email feature

Corporations do funny things. Sure, they have their reasons -- usually they think they're saving money -- but in the end employees often end up scratching their heads when decisions come down from on high.

The latest move comes from Nielsen, the TV ratings people, which issued a pronouncement that, in order to "eliminate bureaucracy and inefficiency," it would be implementing a plan to remove the "Reply to All" feature from employee's Microsoft Oulook installations.

From the company's memo on the subject: "We have noticed that the 'Reply to All' functionality results in unnecessary inbox clutter. Beginning Thursday we will eliminate this function, allowing you to reply only to the sender. Responders who want to copy all can do so by selecting the names or using a distribution list."

Nielsen says this will save server space and time spent on behalf of users who have to waste up to three seconds deleting irrelevant messages. Of course, it will take significantly more time for senders to manually add recipients, or copy and paste them from a previous email, when messages do need to involve multiple people. I expect Nielsen employees should also probably expect to spend more time in physical meetings as they'll get less done electronically.

I'm curious to see how this will all pan out -- and whether Reply to All is quietly reinstated a few months down the road -- but at least one employee is royally peeved about it. In a letter I received, the Nielsen staffer called it "galling" to see the company spend money on silly initiatives like this when other employees were being downsized and outsourced.

Hey -- email it to the boss!

Poll: What do you think?