I was reading a recent article in USAToday, entitled " " and it got me thinking about how newer forms of "real-time" communication overtaking traditional approaches.
As this interesting article points out, younger users view email systems as burdensome and slow compared to social messaging tools that provide "instant gratification".
What are the big differences between the two?
Nielsen Online released an authoritative look at the state of affairs of digital communication in a number of important countries worldwide.
The report’s findings include:
Social networking grew twice as fast as email.Social networking has greater reach than email.Total time spent on Facebook grew by 566% over the previous year versus only 18% for “all internet” and 63% for member communities.Social media’s highest growth came from the over 35 years old demographics.
Differences Between Email And Social Networks
The report clearly shows that the tools that are available to us for communication are constantly changing. The crux of the argument over which is better is that when used correctly, emails offer confidentiality, familiarity and a sense of importance to the reader in relation to other forms of digital communication. Social networks are more public and therefore more impersonal. Emails messages have to meet the needs of both the sender and the recipient; otherwise if it is useless to the reader it falls under the category of “spam”. In social networks, the writer’s needs are met all the time, with some readers needs being met while other reader’s information needs are not.
That said, it behooves organizations, seeking to have a broad yet coherent communications strategy understand that it's not either/or, but both/and. Members of organizations of any size must better understand how to exploit the best of both styles of communications.
