The Compartmentalization Of Language

I was being interviewed as an expert by an ad agency the other day to help them with their client project and started to talk about how you would choose to text message certain pieces of information rather than make a call to say them. I’m not too sure if I gave agency the sound-bite they were looking for but it got me thinking a little about how we reserve the use of different platforms for different types of communication and it’s understanding this that might help us work out how to manage our information overload and even tackle texting while driving.

In my interview I said that you’d never phone someone to say where you were going to be. You would text it because it’s a piece of information that wants to be consumed quickly and possibly referred to later. It will also definitely reach the respondent. A telephone call takes much more time to make, records nothing and there’s a good chance the person at the other end might not pick up.

A central theme in texting seems to be about requesting and passing data for others to use. I would hazard a guess that the reason many people are texting while they’re in the car is to request and share such information. Many drivers are probably texting questions like ‘what’s the address again?’ ‘Will you be ready in 5 mins? Almost at yours.’ and the responses because you don’t make a voice call anymore to communicate in that way.

Tweeting seems to be a little more about the sharing of new ideas. I know people bang on and on about how it’s a conversation channel but I don’t think listening to someone reply to another person’s (unknown) tweet should really be considered conversation. Instead, a lot of valuable tweeting seems to be about spreading news. There is tremendous social value in doing this: the person who shares a link to a new idea could be considered helpful, they could also be considered as knowledgeable in a certain field.

Facebook updates and ’social showers’ are a little more mixed. Many people use applications these days to automatically repost their tweets but in between this syndication many articles posted seem to entertain. It’s interesting to note that all those funny videos, silly quizzes and shocking news that used to be sent around by email seem to be all posted to Facebook now instead

Blogging appears to be about story telling and I’d argue that the number of regularly updated blogs has declined after the spike in popularity because not many people are good at or want to bother telling stories. Probably many people who have stopped blogging found that Tweeting and other social media did the things they wanted to communicate easier. Maybe Skype and video chat also helped those who were less connected.

Although it does handle all of the above, email seems to be evolving into a medium for leaving people memos. At some point it did all of the above very well but then we found new ways. Now if seems to be a place where you want to share detailed information to be read later.

Finally, I was going to consider social news platforms like Wikipedia and Digg but when I thought about them I didn’t really think they offered the democratic freedom as the platforms above. There’s too much editing being done by insider/elite groups for them to really be embraced as communication tools of the people.

I do base these thoughts on the type of research that I do for well known companies but of course this is a very subjective point of view and I’m sure many of you use your communication platforms in different ways. However, I think it’s important that we try to understand what the masses have decided what each platform is for (not what the creators thought each was for). That understanding will help how we as people and companies appropriately use these platforms to respectably communicate with those around us. And maybe we will also understand where there are technology gaps that need filling and rather than rushing for legislation to try to fix problems, we will build new services to overcome the challenges (talking text via GPS units could be a drive in the right direction, no)?

[image by surrealmuse]