rickmans's posterous - Filed under 'weird people'

Hello email world, bye email world

Hello Twitterati, twexit, good morning Twitterteers etc etc. That seems to be normal behavior on microblogging sites and other social networks. I am not going to tell what you should or you should not do online, that is completely up to you, since the Internet is about you and all the individuals there are and there are no rules. However, do you do exactly the same thing with a medium such as email? First thing in the morning: send an email to wish all your colleagues and friends a very good morning, or send them all an email that you are offline for the next 10 minutes. I guess (and hope) you don't do that. I know the mediums differ, however your Twitter account has often a bigger reach than your email.

But some are doing this on Twitter, why would you want to do that? Off course wishing everybody a beautiful morning is great (like wishing everybody in a bus a very good morning), however does it add value after doing that 20 times in a row? And than the other thing: telling people that you are exiting Twitter (the twexit tweets), why would you even want to do that? Will be people end up in utter distress if you won't tweet back in a few minutes? No probably they will think that you are offline, even if you did not tell them. Or do you also enable your auto responder in your email as soon as you leave your email client alone for 10 minutes?

So think before you tweet, does it add value? Your tweet is send out to all your followers and that number is often larger than the number of people you meet in real life in one week. It adds more value to personalize your wishes for a beautiful good morning (and people will appreciate it more if they are the one who get such a personalized greeting). Mentioning that you are not online for a few minutes or hours? Sorry but nobody expects you that you will be online 24/7 so there is no need to notify everybody that you are not online anymore. In case you are afraid that you miss something: you will miss things anyway, you do not have the time to read everything. If it is really important the news will reach you anyway, same goes for urgent matters of your friends, if it is really urgent they will find you, independent of the medium.

Well I go offline for a few minutes, have to do some shopping...

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The mystery of social networking

Some people tend to talk in a mysterious way about social media and what you can achieve with it. Those people tend to stress it is the best thing since sliced bread (or gun powder) and that is really something magical. Today I saw this nice sentence about it:

....that allow them to connect and communicate in a way that works for them...

The thing I was thinking was: ah you are talking about email, don't you? Social Media isn't something magical or mysterious. It is something that is part of human nature which is made easier by some technologies. Please do not pretend it is some kind of hocus pocus, it is just as twenty years ago: building (individual) relationship with and between people. People are often a black box, however people are already building relationships from the moment they existed. Building a relationship with somebody through social media isn't that different, it is doing the same thing, with new tools. The audience you can reach is way bigger than it used to be 2000 years ago, however you still build a network one person at a time.

rickmans’s posterous

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Hello email world, bye email world

The mystery of social networking

Rick Mans

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