Will Facebook messaging replace Email? Probably Not!

Email is on the decline as a communication tool, and some claim were are observing the start of a trend which sees other forms of online communication taking over. In particular, some claim, the new integrated text, chat and messaging service offered by Facebook. A recent Pew Report highlights the use of a range of technologies for communicating, Text remains on top, followed surprisingly perhaps (or to me anyway) by phone calls (Cell and landline have daily use by 30-38%), face-to-face and then online with email languishing at the bottom with 11%.

As the Pew team note, however, this is demonstrating that different tools are used for different groups. Closest friends with whom we share phone numbers are texted and spoken to, and we are likely to see some of them each day and so have 'real' conversations. There are then a wider circle of friends who we communicate with online, they will be within our Facebook network and some linked to via instant messaging services aided by their prevalence across smart phones. Email is now the most formal level of communication. It has become the equivalent of a letter in the modern age. Young people will communicate formally using email but are unlike to use this for informal communication with their friends.

This suggests that email will not die, but its use will be modified. It also suggests a more social dimension to communication that needs to be understood perhaps. That tools that can be used to communicate directly to individuals are only appropriate for certain types of communication. There may be a use of social networking for promotion, but it is not a channel for advertising but socialising across geographical spaces. Equally, communication tools are no longer built for a purpose only but shaped by usage and to understand how to communicate you must firstly understand how people communicate to one another and want to receive communication from different sources - friends, organisations etc. Usage sets the rules, and it is not necessarily the usage built into the design. Food for thought perhaps

Why I love UGC

The real bonus with Web 2.0 is that it easily facilitates ordinary web users to create their own content and contribute to campaigns. This was forwarded to me by one of my students, no name! I guess they lean away from the Conservatives!

After a little investigation I found a lot of different posters, all of a similar vein though perhaps less blunt, floating around on Twitter. The site where these originate is very simple and allows anyone to generate the words to fit around the now famous, possibly airbrushed, picture of Cameron. It is a creation of Andy Barefoot who supports neither Labour or Conservatives, maybe a Liberal Democrat (??) and his site has a few more sophisticated versions. But the power of these is that all those online activists can create them, circulate them, some may go viral, a lot of people have a laugh but, in political terms, it may have an impact on overall perceptions of David Cameron. This may not be based on the message itself, though they may be reminders of negatives linked to Cameron's history or persona, the above links to the Labour 'Dave the Chameleon' video and his background in public relations as negatives. But such offhand allusions to a negative message that makes this powerful; impact is based mainly on the fact that people we know (our friends on Facebook, Bebo and social networks or those we follow on Tumblr and Twitter or email contacts) do not like Cameron and oppose him as prime minister. I wait to see the same done to Labour and Gordon Brown, or is deemed too easy a target?