…. the stuff they write these days, it’s just noise.
An interesting article in the NY Times posits the end of email as we know it. They argue that the formality of eMail doesn’t suit the younger generation. There’s all that signing in. There are those odd things called subject lines. There are these unknown things called “cc:” and “bcc:” (and what the hell is a “carbon copy” anyway). Lastly, you can send it and it might sit for hours. That’s so yesterday.
They want the immediency of instant messages and chat. This is the AIM generation (the only successful thing ever to come from AOL). Here are some numbers from the article:
The number of total unique visitors to major e-mail sites like Yahoo and Hotmail is now in steady decline, according to the research company comScore. Such visits peaked in November 2009 and have since slid 6 percent; visits among 12- to 17-year-olds fell around 18 percent. (The only big gainer in the category has been Gmail, up 10 percent from a year ago.)
Facebook will be following this trend in their new email (oops) messaging system. According to the article, the service will eliminate the subject line on messages (its research showed that it was most commonly left blank or used for an uninformative “hi” or “yo.”). Gone will be the “cc” and “bcc” lines. Hitting the enter key can immediately fire off the message, à la instant messaging, instead of creating a new paragraph.
OK, I’m old fashioned. I like paragraphs. I like writing in more than 140 characters or single sentences. I like to compose my thoughts, and sometimes wax rhapsodically. What about you? Do you like this new trend?
