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E-mail Is For Old People
Strolls writes "Although the article itself doesn't seem quite as exciting or newsworthy, this headline from Reuters amused me mightily. Reuters' summary is here and here's the original survey by Pew Internet and American Life Project." From the article: "Internet users from 12 to 17 years old say e-mail is best for talking to parents or institutions, but they are more likely to fire up IM when talking with each other, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found. E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."
IM is for conversation, email is for documentation.
IM is for communication in real-time, email is for communication any time.
IM is for communication with someone online, email is for communication with someone online or offline.
IM is for temporary messaging, email is for permanent messaging.
IM is for instant messaging, email is for persistent messaging.
As a group, teens have more time to sit and chat than adults, hence the preference for IMing friends. IM is just the electronic equivalent of hanging out at the mall.
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
Of course kids are going to love instant gratification through real-time instant messaging as opposed to email. Until they grow up and find themselves in business situations where they're going to need to coordinate meetings, share presentations/comments and work with peers/partners who live in different time zones there simply isn't a need for them to use email. Can you imagine logging in and finding your desktop covered with IM pop-ups from customers and colleagues? It's just not practical in the business arena to use IM as the only means of communication.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
In America, only old people use e-mail.
--Mike Boos
Here come the Korea jokes.
and you yet linked to the yahoo!news version of it, while a perfectly working version exists on reuter http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?typ e=technologyNews&storyID=2005-07-27T231617Z_01_N27 287870_RTRIDST_0_TECH-TECH-TEENS-DC.XML
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
...AFTER they get a job. If I get less than 50 e-mails a day at work, it's a Christmas day miracle.
-Valiss
...or all over?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
I for one hate IM due to the abbreviated "1337" speak used in it. I also hate having to search back through the Trillian logs looking for somthing someone said weeks ago.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Did you hear that 18 year olds? You're old people now. Grab a prune-juice and check your email.
Starsucks
But what about when they're old enough that not everybody is constantly online or near an IM client...... oh, wait, never mind.
E-mail Is For Old People
So those VIAGRA spammers knew about this long before this research.
Thanks, here's another bomb: talking enthusiastically preferred to writing letters for conversation among peers located within 10 feet of each other.
stuff |
im is synchronous
email is asynchronous
so they both have their pluses and minuses as a communicaiton medium, depending upon what you are doing
i think the kids are just restating the fatigue we are all feeling from the effects of email spam
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Finally, I'm an old person ... and I didn't even have to wait until I was 40.
-=sigh=-
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
A recent survey shows that teens prefer talking on the telephone over mailing each other prerecorded tapes of themselves talking.
Everyone 18 and over are "old" to the 12 - 17 crowd.
I luv instnt msg LOLOL i gt nu nokia fone!!111 cum 2 my plce
I suspect this is largely true, mostly because we "older" folks have more responsibilities that preclude us from hanging out and IMing each other.
I use IM at work to talk with other folks about the crisis du-jour. With a million things clamoring for my attention all day, it's nice to have an asynchronous medium like email for things that don't need a response *right this instant*.
Hey, don't just assume us "old" people only use email and IM. I happen to use IRC which is about as "old" as me. ;)
Content Management System: A pretentious way of saying "text editor."
Read Blue's News, start submitting Links of the Day.
Read I Cringely, post a topic as soon as his latest article is up.
There are others, but I don't read them...
IM: Turn off logging and it's great for unrecorded, quick or asynnc. private conversations with coworkers. (I know it's unsecure-- not too concerned about that, being the admin & all).
If anyone starts using l33t speak during IM conversations, I'll run over to their desk and beat them with a wet noodle.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Raise your hand if you remember when the command for Instant Messaging was 'write'.
In the office we use both IM and e-mail.
IM is used when we have a quick question, need to check and see if someone is in before we transfer a call, want to know who wants to get some Chineese for lunch, etc.
We e-mail our clients. We e-mail project status reports, team task lists, meeting agendas.
IM replaces what we would say on a phone. e-mail replaces what we would print on a printer.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
My parents have no clue how to Use IM, but they did get into email somewhat, so I see the point there. And teenagers who don't have a job, and who have friends that don't have jobs, have no need for email as all their friends are always going to be online, or at the very least have an away message up. However, in the business world no matter what age you are you're going to use email. And in the gaming world no matter what age you are you're going to use IM's. In short, while age is a factor, I think occupation of time is the biggest factor.
My name is a variety of floral rose, and no, it's not blue
In related news, I will never understand these people that insist on using IM over their phone! Fucking, just call the person! Ass.
My site
My films
90% still use email, but have "greater enthusiasm" for IM? Somehow I don't get the conclusion that email is for old people from that.
The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success. -Elliot Carver
I use IM for people I know IRL. I cannot remember the last time I emailed someone I hang out with, seldomly or regularly. If they're not online, I use SMS. Email is either used to get to know new people or for business.
I'm 18 and I get about 2 emails a week but spend hours talking to people over AIM,IRC,MSN,MUCKs, etc. That's both good and bad, if someone's trying to keep a conversation going over email, I can take my time in replying and IMs have their downfall in that you pretty much have to reply instantenously. Feh.
The adults and older people should be happy that teens are using IM's. Because..:
They aren't calling long distance on the phone or using too many cell phones minutes to talk to their friends.
AND In many cases they aren't tying up a phone line (if they have broadband).
I say this because it's the adults who will most likely be paying the phone bills and/or not being able to use the phone if their teenager is on it all day.
About that spammer that had his head bashed in in russia, u trying to say it was old people that did it? i mean its a valid reason as they were prolly pissed cos the viagra from the ads they bought didnt work :(
I use IM for friends whom I want to chat with, IRC for flamewars (This is IRC, every channel is #mydistroisbetterthanyours,) and email for business discussions or leaving a note to someone who's offline. Effective use of all the available technologies increases productivity. There's times to plan and chat and there's times to shut them off and code.
I write messaging software for a living, and even I loathe instant messaging, *especially* for group communication. Things fly by, there is no coherence, you can't really refer back to things, it generally just feels childish and unprofessional. It's hard to tell when anything has been completed or when a resting state has been maintained. Half the time you have no idea if the person on the other end is paying attention and conversations end very abruptly. It sucks.
(interesting side note is that emailer is old enough to be in the dictionary, but IMer is not. One is truly old when one's verbifications are standard.)
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
More and more I wish there was one app that did it all. I am increasingly finding it difficult to research the history of conversations I have with colleagues and friends. Sometimes they start in IM and end in email or vise versa. Then combine that with the several IM services available and friends who subscribe to more than one. I also get frustrated when a conversation goes back and forth from ICQ and AIM or MSN from the same person, though at least this doesn't happen often. If one app could unify all mainstream communications both IM and email, and create an intuitive interface for organization and search abilities I think it would be a hit.
It is true. The youth such as myself have taken to communicating by forming words in Hangul with zergs while in game so we don't have to alt-tab to get to MSN. ^___^
In all seriousness, ... smoke signals. They're the future.
--
"pain is weakness leaving the body."Apples are better than oranges.
Story at 11.
IM is synchronous; e-mail is asynchronous. See the literature for corresponding behavior.
That will change when they get old enough to pay their own way in life. When they are working a job to pay their way through school plus raising a kid, no one wants someone constantly interrupting them to ask 'wot u up 2?'
The main reason that instant messaging (IM) is popular among young adults is that it provides the kind of instant gratification that e-mail cannot provide. IM gives you instant interaction with the other party: friend, girl friend, etc. E-mail responses are usually not instantaneous and depend on whether the recipient of the e-mail note has logged onto her computer and actually read the note.
Don't get me wrong, I was a shortsighted twit when I was a teenager, too. What an ass! But all this does is document that teenagers:
1) Think the whole world revolves around them,
2) that is does, or should do so right now,
3) that anyone who isn't talking to them right now is a loser,
4) and that MTV has further reduced their attention span to that of a gnat.
In other news: teenagers think belts, savings accounts, and employers are also for Old People.
"Timmy, write your grandmother a thank you note for paying your tuition this semester."
"I can't - she's not online. What an old loser!"
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I worked on a development team where half of our programmers were in Russia and the other half were in-house and our only form of conversation was IM.
I think what people 12-17 don't understand, and not through any fault of their own but mostly just because of the fact they haven't been exposed to corporate America is that there's a thing called Accountability. People in the business world now feel that e-mail is a sufficient medium for discussing important business matters, setting deadlines, etc. While this may change in the coming years, and definetly will, that is the concensus now. So, for someone 12-17 who doesn't have to deal with corporate America at this point e-mail probably does feel a bit old school.
I just imagined /. in real time (an open chat room):
/. it's always like: argh, we are the pirates, MS is the biatch! Leenux all the way!
-FriSt Pst, b147ch35!
(with heavy Russian accent): -Hot grits. Get your hot grits here.
-Oh, yes, Nataly Portman always reminds me of a good big bowl of nice steaming hot gritz.
-GOOGLE ROKZ. THIER ARE THE CLOOOEST! I AM A ROKCET SCENTEIST >LWE>F PFQ!FP !
-In soviet Russia, Rocket Scientists Google YOU.
-Oh, man, I remember this one time, in the band camp....
-Yes, Microsoft is the evil empire. They are releasing this new service, a total Google rip off too...
-Microsoft is just trying to play nice, and here on
-It's Mr. GNU/Linux to you, a55h47.
-Give man a fish and he ows you a fish. Hit him on the head with a fish and he just swims there in the fishery. For the dead fish.
-4ll y0ur b453 4r3...
-You, dumb ass, this 'all your base' crap is like 10 years old. Get with the program!
----------------------
Yup. I can see why teenagers like the IM more than email. You have to think before sending an email (well, at least a little more) because you don't have the easy way to instantly correct what you just said.
You can't handle the truth.
Communication users from 12 to 17 years old say postal mail is best for talking to parents or institutions, but they are more likely to dial up a phone when talking with each other, the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project found. Postal mail is still used by 90 percent of teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for phone calling.
"E-mail is still used by 90 percent of online teens. But the survey found greater enthusiasm for instant messaging."
"Three-quarters of teen Internet users use instant messaging, compared with 42 percent of adults."
OK, 90% of teens use email and 75% of teens use IM. Yet teens have a "greater enthusiasm for instant messaging"? Sure, a greater enthusiasm than adults (75% to 42% according to this survey). Is that a surprise to anyone? But they are still more likely to be users of email. So what's the point of this?
IM is a huge pain in the butt.
/. just have an article about three minute distraction intervals and the loss of creativity?
IM is a distraction.
IM is a total waste of my time.
I used IM for a very brief period and got sick of everyone expecting an answer __right__ __now__. So I no longer use it. Ever.
Didn't
Bingo!
You want an answer from me, send email.
When I get around to it, I'll read it. And then after that, when I get around to it, I'll answer it.
EMAIL works. IM interrupts work.
I thought the same thing before I got a real job, as did most people that are now in their mid-20's and working an office gig. It's really not a remarkable insight.
I hate being a Nazi, but I've read this so many times and it's finally got to me: a downside is a flaw, a downfall is something, perhaps a flaw, perhaps not, that is your undoing.
What you are talking about is a downside, not a downfall unless you think it means the end of IM.
Play Command HQ online
i talk to all my friends on IM. i rarely ever use the phone, unless I'm out which is when I'll use my cell for a quick "hey where are you when are you getting here" if we're coordinating a get-together someplace. i hate talking on the phone.
i use email to talk to professors, club leaders, parents and relatives while at school, etc...
...and that's all there is to it.
This is probably going to equate me with the Stone Age, but I find both email and IM rather impersonal. I would rather get up, and walk the 10 feet to talk to the person directly. I find breaking the isolation gets better results. *shrug* Why cut out 70% of my communication abilities (read: body language). If something goes south on a project I can reinforce behavior with my 6'7 frame. *grin*
With IM, you give up your desires, needs, wants, ambitions, politics, loves, hates, hobbies, friends, and families to the corporate machine. All text is there to be consumed by a data mining engine created for the sole purpose of knowing about you. Beware of using IM at a company. Beware of using IM if you work for the government, or state. Beware of using IM at home. Unless you are running your own messaging service, you won't be free from scrutiny. Of course the same is true for free email services too. Use anything free at your own risk. It is astounding how young people don't give a second thought about personal privacy issues. Just offer something for free, and it is taken like candy.
Off soapbox.
Same shit, different bun.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
E-mail, instant messaging, and Internet Relay Chat do not make "three forms of communication", as IRC is just one of the oldest IM/presence protocols on the Internet. I believe Gaim uses almost the same UI for AIM/ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!, and IRC.
they get their first crackberry.
then everything will change.
what if there was a system of communicating just like IMing, only if the person you wanted to say something to wasn't online, you could still IM them and it would be stored on their IM server until they got back, at which point they'd recieve their message. it'd be just like GAIM buddy pouncing, only you wouldn't have to leave your computer running all the time to pounce the buddy, the server would handle the pouncing. i think that could eliminate email almost completely amongst teens.
I will never understand these people that insist on using IM over their phone! Fucking, just call the person! Ass.
Depends what you mean:If I ever wrote malware, it would strip the "reply all" button off of outlook. I love "reply all" the best for listserves though. Nothing like getting a bunch of "How do I subscribe to this list" messages in my inbox.
The article doesn't get that people who have jobs and/or a life are not able to IM all the time like a teenie can. Just another example of a meaningless survey because of a lack of asking the right questions.
What is Hardware email? All my email is sent through software. Have the invented an E-mail accelerator chip now?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Remember the VMS phone utility, or UNIX chat?
I remember sitting in a room full of VT100s (ostensibly) doing homework, and phoning my friends in the lab with me. Of course, that was back in college, when I didn't mind getting distracted, since I was usually trying to avoid homework or some such thing...
Now, I can't be bothered. I'm too much of an old fart to want to spend my time online chatting about nothing... Different times, different apps. Same old stuff...
Since when did IM and e-mail become hardware? Sorry, just something I noticed. Now, off to write some e-mails....
I am a senior in college, and while i predominantly use AIM at home, I've found that at work I use my Email as the main source of communication. (It's more professional and less invasive than instant messaging).
How does this story fall under "Hardware"? Any clues Zonk?
and IRC is for cool people! =)
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
This makes sense until you realize that the sample set was all girls. Once you factor that in, it's hardly surprising to find that 66% of their siblings were male. Had the sample set included an equal number of male and female participants, the actual ratio would more closely approach 50%.
This is a survey based upon a narrow subset of all computer users in the specified age bracket. Had the sample set been representative of all computer users in the specified age range, I suspect that a very different set of conclusions would be forthcoming.
Alot of people i come in contact with only use IM. They never check their e-mail. never check voicemail. You have to reach them at THAT time they are available, otherwise they just won't get back to you.
I go to friends houses and see their MSN messenger say they have 800 some odd e-mails. I ask them "don't you ever check your e-mail" as i have sent them a few things from time to time and wondered why they never replyed. They said "No i just gave up on it because of all the SPAM and other company's that put me on their mailing list just went i go to the site to get info on a product"
Same goes for Voicemails. They see who it was calling and call back asking what i needed. I ask them "no i didn't listen to the voicemail. i just called back" so i have to go through detail again about what i said in the voicemail. Because of this i have all together stoped saying anything besides "Hey this is Adam, I have a question about "THIS" Give me a call back" that way i don't waste my time explaining something specific when all their going to do is call me back without listening to it.
Frankly All i use E-mail for now days is Newsletters, and Shipping updates on inventory. Everything else at my company is just through Cell phone or IM. Just save all your Convo Logs and your fine.
I don't know why there's a big distinction between "email" and "IM". Every IM has the same sender/recipient info as email, even if it's not shown in the UI. And it's got its own routing info that's not SMTP, so those metadata aren't relevant - but in parallel. The IM UI really just automatically focuses the email UI and hides it. Then uses a different network protocol for transmission. Yes, the techs and RFCs are different. But there's no reason that IMs, if only stored, can't be directly transformed into "emails".
A good email database would store all these messages, as well as phone messages (including recordings of live, synchronous standard conversations), faxes, and every other "personal message", in a structure allowing a "metaformat". Depending on the MIME type of the message, it would associate with MIME-dependent variants of its address and transport. Even mismatches, like IM's missing "Subject:" data, could default to "IM: Alice to Bob 2005/7/28 13:48 EST" or the first line of the body. Then people could correspond across all these messaging techs, without getting trapped in the means to the end of interpersonal communication. The "universal inbox" could transcend all the media, and just bring people together, if it mapped these formats within a GUI that even old people could just use, without getting hung up on the technical limits.
--
make install -not war
This garbage is moderated insightful? The moderators must have never worked in the real world.
Thankfully, no one else in the world has deadlines that depend upon your lazy Anonymous ass. At least we can all go to bed tonight knowing that when we need your help in order to complete a critical project task that you will not be available. We'll just go to the person that actually responds to our requests.
After you get laid off for not helping out the team, don't come crying to me.
I still have Pine.
I still use Pine.
I still like Pine.
I can't beging to tell you how many times I've been sent an email by my boss, and then 30 seconds later they are in my face asking why I have not read it yet.
At least in a work enviroment "when I get to read it" doesn't work. It has to be read as soon as it's recived, or else I look like a dumb ass.
Hmm, I have the exact opposite relation to IM + work. A few of my friends are always on during work hours. Since we're all working it's not a constant stream of text. Not only are we able to bounce problems off each other, but for some reason it seems that just knowing your friends are online and available (and being able to see them in the IM app) scratches a fairly fundamental social itch.
Or to put my point more practically... if you're working turn off new message notification on your IM client, and only check when you want to. Your friends will get the message.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Wow you must be old.
I don't use IM for the same reason I don't carry a cell phone. I don't want people to think they can contact me whenever they want. I can think of few things that are that important to be notified instantly/constantly. Send e-mail or leave a voice mail and I'll get back to you when I'm ready.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm in a public school where everyone is either e-mailing or IMing at their computers...
Here's how you spot them:
The ones who're laughing, crying, screaming, tripping (legs jumping up and down feverishly while eating nails from the fingers while smiling and sweating)
Yep..that's the ones Instant Messaging
To find the E-mailers... Just follow the "Tchikka tchikka klikka klikka tchikka DONK (spacebar!) tchikka klikka dikka klikka KLONK! (loose spacebar)....sounds!
Ah..instant genious... E-Mailers, recognizeable anywhere.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
IM is for kids who want to converse but who have nothing to say.
IM is for kids who can track the threads of twenty different conversations simultaneously, but don't have an attention span longer than ten seconds.
IM is for kids who have nothing better to do than get interrupted with a message every nine seconds.
IM is for kids so unsocialized they need it to talk to someone standing only five feet away.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You need to try an IM client from this decade.
If the user is not there, IMs will wait until that user logs on to deliver the message, just like cell phone text messaging. A decent IM client will also offer a message logging feature. The main thing missing that email has is which servers the message was bounced around to during its travels.
So I agree that email is better for documentation, but they can be equally persistent.
Psst...your curmudgeonliness is showing!
Why IM? When was the last time you answered all you your email? What is the signal/noise ration of IM. (In this case Signal being something you're interested in, not necessarily business specific.)
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
What this survey tell us is that IM is a toy for kids, not a serious communication tool for adults. Yet the summary conveys the attitude that "old people" are deficient because they do not IM. If you are a kid with time to waste, IM might be a fun way to play with your friends. Yet that children spend their time playing with a disruptive and inefficient communications medium is no basis for criticizing adults who have better things to do with their lives. As an adult, I have a serious job which requires concentrating for long periods without interruption. I can't afford to be interrupted every time one of my friends wants to IM me. Email and phones are just a better solution for serious professionals whose time matters to them and who need to concentrate without interruption. In the working world, the intended topic of conversation usually passes a threshold of seriousness or necessity before placing a phone call. So you tend to only get the more important interruptions. Voice conversation are also a much more efficient form of communication, just measure in WPM. Most people can speak a lot faster than they can type. And your emai waits for you.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Teenagers simply have more time, in general, to waste talking about nothing, and it's really no more complex than that.
I distinctly remember in the "good old days" my preference for one-on-one chatting via 'talk' or babbling about nothing on havens or MUDs. As time's gone by, I've got less and less time (and interest) to devote to talking to people I don't know (or care to know) about what sort of shampoo they use on their dog, &c.
The main reason instant messaging (IM) became popular with me is that my buddy Thad lives in Kansas City, while I live in San Francisco, yet we both happen to be sitting in front of computers all day. I later realized that it allows me to chat with my friend Dave, who works in an office in Redwood City, and we could both say the most horrible, offensive, profanity-laden things without alarming all the people in the cubes next to us.
That's it. No pop psychology or armchair media-studies theories required.
Breakfast served all day!
I just imagined /. in real time (an open chat room)
You don't have to imagine. Go there.
Why is this filed under Hardware?
Well, just show him or her the pile of things he/she gave you a half hour ago that "must be done immediately," and he/she may figure out why you did not drop everything and answer the email.
Yet another story from "The Offices of Captain Obvious".
What is Hardware email?
This company sells a dedicated appliance containing hardware and embedded software to act as a spam-filtering e-mail server.
Have the invented an E-mail accelerator chip now?
I'd imagine that some companies either are looking into or have already introduced accelerator ASICs for the Bayesian filtering and other algorithms in their e-mail server appliances.
12-17 year olds don't have jobs. Therefore they are always superuser on their system. At big companies, the corporate desktop is locked down. You can't necessarily install IM for personal use. Or you can, but you can't get it through the application proxy. On unrestricted machines, I try IM before sending an email. At work (which is about 1/2 my waking hours), I must use email.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Maybe since the kids are growing up with instant messaging they will come up with better ways of using it for business. I'm sure a lot of the negative things people say about IM'ing (unprofessional) were said about email at one time too.
Back in my day, we didn't have these fancy IM thingees. We had smoke signals. In some bad winters, we ran out of dry wood to burn, so we burned dirt! There's nothing like sending a "I pwned you!" dirt smoke signal to somebody who's fire I just rooted.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That is *not* how you start a flame war on Slashdot! You have to start with something like "Hairy Armpit 1 is faaaaar superior to Hairy Armpit 2 due to X, Y, and Z features and most importantly that Hairy Armpit 2 stinks to high heaven! I mean, who designed that piece o crap anyway?"
Better luck next time!
-l
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Everybody overlooks Ed when the flame wars start. This is unacceptable. The standard editor should be involved in all comparisons and discussions regarding which of the three is THE BEST editor at all.
Of course, such comparisons are void. There is only one true standard editor.
If you have a son or daughter (or sister, in my case) that spend a fair share of their time online, take a peek some day at what they are doing without them knowing you're watching. Some of the things my sister and her friends are doing are pretty neat and seem to be this generation's MUDs, MUSHs, and MOOs.
For example, my sister spends 2-3 hours an evening posting things on phpBB-esque websites that are seemingly topicless and random discussions can be had.
Instant messaging is a HUGE part of my teenage sister's life, as well. She comes home from school, hops on the computer and talks to her friends for the rest of the night. When I asked her why she doesn't just call her friends, she said that she couldn't do many things at once as easily when on the (cell)phone.
Sure, being a teenager (angst, emotional changes, etc.) hasn't changed much over the ages, but the way that they are spending their time going through it has definitely changed, and is continuing to change. This article makes it clear!
--Mike Perry, Seattle
Here's the difference (in my opinion):
Instant messaging is for keeping in constant touch with people I'm close to or really like talking with a lot and have some form of relationship to or with.
Email is for everyone else.
The only people who have my instant messaging identity are those I want to talk with on a regular basis. I don't throw my username out there for every person on earth to contact me on. Only those I like to be contacted by often. Everyone else can use email. Email is for keeping in touch with *everyone*.
I'd just as happily use email for everyone, but that's a little harder to keep in touch on a daily basis. With instant messaging, I can be in the office and have someone jump on and say "Hey, how are you? Do you want to go have drinks tonight?" and I can respond instantly and it's taken one minute of each person's time. And they got an instant response to their offer without waiting around hoping I get and reply to their email.
Oh - and that's the other thing - with all the half-assed filtering on most servers, you have no idea if someone actually got your email or not. That's a pain. With instant messaging you know right away.
I'm more of an email man myself... but instant messaging has been around a long time now. It's nothing new, so it shouldn't be a surprise that it's found a niche in our lives to fill.
So we record IM, web, and email at my company...kinda funny when people cyb0r in IM thinking they are safe even after the disclaimer pops up saying it is recorded...
Bluecoat ftw.
I keep in touch with everyone I know through Anonymous Coward postings on Slashdot.
You are 1,001.358859 fold a Beast.
I agree with everything you wrote -- but really, the confusion over this (which leads to the headlines) is generated because until recently, teens have been at the technological forefront. Only recently have non-geek, technologically literate adults become easy to find. Viewed through that lens, folks assume that if the kids are doing it, soon we all will be. This is still true for many things, but not in this case.
To wit: I was part of this transition. In college I still used email, but 90% of communication with my peers was through IM. Now, several years out, I still use IM, but 90% of my communication with my peers is via email.
I agree that there is no social concensus yet on how to treat IM. There is for phone, email and direct conversation, but it appears to me that the etikette I expect from my buddies on IM is not the same as they are willing to display.
I hate it when the message window is closed without saying anything by the other party. that's like hanging up the phone directly after picking up. I you are busy (or) at work, there are status notifications for that. But I guess these people are to lazy to use those.
As for:
"EMAIL works. IM interrupts work."
IM works faster if you use all functions (like siganlling you are busy if you are busy)
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
I was involved with a group analyzing a major survey of internet usage, and they published analysis that concluded that most people communicate by email online. This, of course, is the way that the lead researcher communicates online; he (at the time, and perhaps still) couldn't use IM to save his life. He wouldn't know where to start.
Of course, there was no option on the survey to determine whether people preferred to use instant messaging - only an option for "chat rooms," which isn't the same thing at all. I pointed this out, but was pretty much ignored and the results were published saying that "everyone uses email and nobody chats online" and that hence "asynchronous" communication was preferred online. (Funny enough, this is accidentally mildly accurate as IM is actually somewhat asynchronous as well, but that is purely coincidental.)
That's what happens when you have old people writing surveys who have no clue about how younger people actually use the internet. This was obvious years ago.
picpix image polls. create - share - vote. fun!
I used to be one of the people who used IM exclusively compared to email, even for asynchronous messaging. But that was in college, when it was easy to coerce your friends into using the same messenger, and easy to exchange IM usernames at a party or in class.
As an adult, that's not so much the case. In the workplace such standardization can occur, but not often otherwise. E-mail is guaranteed to work, and is accepted for inter-company communication.
This is exactly why it's such a travesty that IM is largely owned and operated proprietarily by a single corporation.
This world really needs Jabber to catch on.
m00
MilkMiruku
"write" for line terminals, "talk" etc. for page-capable text terminals with a termcap defined.
Can somebody who has actually used "IM", "talk", and "write" tell me (and the other non-IM-using dinosaurs) whether
- IM is just a proprietary reimplementation of, say talk, or
- what IS its functionality that makes it different and "better".
(Notw that I consider builtin versions of things like nix's "is user george accessable?" commands to be convenient but not earthshattering.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
IM is still relatively spam-free. Wait until it gets bogged down with spam.
In Korea, only old people.....oh darn.
Mouch of teens' communication is related to forming and strengthening social networks and finding their places in them. This requires a lot of rapid, short-term interaction. IM is a good match for this.
Adults (in general) have social networks that are well-established and don't require constant work. Their communication needs are more oriented to planning and coordination of longer-term projects, whether business, day-to-day "housekeeping", politics, skill-building, or any of a host of other things that are longer term and more asynchronous. Email is a good match for that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Some years ago I was more convinced of this. Now, I think that filters are winning the battle against spam. And with PGP I can rely a bit more in email. So.... maybe there's hope.
IM is for temporary messaging, email is for permanent messaging.
IM users, especially youth, have a tendancy to still think IM is an un-logged communication with no permanent record kept, but ever-increasingly IM logs are being retained for long periods of time since storage is getting cheaper every day.
As I get older, it also becomes more and more apparent that anything and everything you say to anybody can come back later to haunt you. When I was still pretty young, in my teens, a very wise man said a very simply and profound statement to me: "Son, Everything you say and do in your life will come back around full circle to you someday, guaranteed, no matter whether it's good or bad, it will come back". My response then was something like "Shyeah right, whatever dude." Now that over two decades have passed since then, I realize the old guy was absolutely right. The youth do not think too deeply about how whatever they say now may affect them later on... that's all part of being young, but the older you get, you tend to think more before composing a piece of communication... that's part of maturity.
Back to the subject, IM being perceived as "temporary" is actually a false perception and I'd bet that if the vast majority of IM users, young or old, would wake up and realize that much IM activity over the Internet today is now being logged, monitored, and retained with even greater intensity (especially by govt and law enforcement) than plain old email, it would certainly have a chilling effect on the use of IM.
Offline messages and away messages allow "screening" of IMs. If I don't feel like talking to anyone, I just throw an away message up, answering only those messages that I want.
I'm having a hard time understanding why email is being compared to instant messaging. That would be like comparing snail mail to the telephone.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Whilst I can agree, if you need someone that urgently give them a phone call. If you don't need them urgently, fire off an email.
I have a lot of different things all feeding me information at once. I even use two machines, one for working and one with a seperate monitor just for keeping on top of the information flow.
Phone
Email
IM
Texts
IRC
Slashdot
In that order, unless someone uses a higher priority medium to get my attention to a lower priority medium.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
As a 16-year old internet-obsessed teenager, I get the feeling that this article is trying to talk about me and my friends. So many of the comments I am reading are gross generalizations about how teens suck for some reason or another. I'll admit that some of us have some growing up to do, but please don't generalize. I use IM when it's useful, but I actually email many of my friends more than I IM them. I find email a place to have (somewhat) meaningful conversations and it's far easier for me to use. It's not AIM that I always have running, it's Gmail (always the 1st tab in Firefox for me). There are many teenagers out there who actually do something with their time and I don't appreciate being insulted.
That being said, I do have to agree that many teens have nothing to talk about. I have given up IM for the most part and so have several of my busier friends. We just have better things to do than start worthless conversations with random people. I have to agree that 90% of IM is inane. I do sometimes use IM to get ahold of people for quick answers and that's often the only reason some of us stay on IM. If I need to check on what homework we were supposed to do and I plan on doing it in the next 15 minutes, IM is useful. If I'm coordinating a long-term homework assignment, email is better. There are quite a few people on and off my buddy list that really bug me when they try to talk. They have absolutely no reason whatsoever to talk to me other than the fact that they are bored. OTOH, "inane" conversation can actually have a use. Teenagers like to socialize and make friends. Small talk, be it in person or on the Interinet, is crucial to development of relationships. Teenagers still haven't nailed down how to quickly and efficiently grow relationships so they take an inordinate amount of time chit-chatting. By mid to late high school, many of us have grown up and move on from excessive dumb conversation.
I get the feeling that most IM and espescially inane IM centers around people under 14. By 15 or 16, many teens are too busy to be just blabbing. Sports, homework, dating, school, etc. take up much of their time. Kids under 14, however, have very little to be doing. They're still being given their childhood and often have tons of free time. They also have very little in the way of social development. These factors combine to produce (I think) most of the inane IM traffic on the Internet. These kids will grow up and learn, it will just take time.
I refuse to be interrupted by IM. If you need something, email me, or come over to my desk and talk to me. Both of those activities takes more effort than simple chat, and so weeds out the really frivolous things. (More often than not, by the time they email or talk to me, they've solved their own problem.)
Besides, I hardly ever mind talking to someone face to face, but that little blinking IM window icon makes me seethe. And when I'm seriously heads-down, people can actually see that and so tend to not bother me. (As I do for them when I walk over to their desk.)
BTW, this is accepted policy where I work and I'm far from alone in doing it. Most people here refuse to run an IM client and respond to desk encounters with "Can this be put into an email?" even before the question is asked.
An added benefit of this is that email can be printed, filed, saved, annotated, forwarded to a larger group, replied to later, etc. IM is limited as a lasting form of communication. IM is not as bad as voicemail (which is almost completely useless), but it's still a pretty ineffectual and disruptive form of communication.
After you get laid off for not helping out the team, don't come crying to me.
Being able to do your job in a timely fashion, sans interruption, will rarely result in a layoff. Useless wool-gathering IM sessions are another matter.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I used IM for a very brief period and got sick of everyone expecting an answer __right__ __now__. So I no longer use it. Ever.
Man, you must be real interesting to talk to on the phone or, god help us, face to face.
IM works well in my workplace. It replaces the stop-by-someones-cube routine for people who are more than a few second's walk away. Saves me dozens of trips across the corporate campus per day, as my growing waistline will attest.
Yes, there are still telephones for urgent matters, but most things just aren't *that* urgent, and the phone seems to be much more of a distraction than IM.
DRM 'manages access' in the same way that a prison 'manages freedom'
I don't understand all these rants about IM being synchronous and email being aysnchronous.
;)
Haven't you guys heard about the concept of "offline messages" in IMs? I use IM for both synchronous and ansynchronous messages.
I guess all you guys are really old not to know this. Enjoy your email !
Telephones are the electronic equivalent of telephones.
In Soviet Russia, email uses YOU!
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
I've got a land line, cell phone, instant messaging, powerpoint, e-mail.
Now, if I only had something to say.
Specifically, those who use IM favor an abbreviated (and somewhat horrendous) version of written English, while those who author emails tend to at least pretend they're writing letters (albeit briefer ones) and use the appropriate grammar and spelling associated with them.
The issue is very much cultural as earlier posters have indicated.
Also, email can have instant gratification if the sender and recipient actually have a good mail client and check their mail frequently. I've used email as a pseudo-IM on numerous occasions.
It obviously only looks at email/IM use in Korea.
Sans-serif is still used by 90 percent of online teens, but the survey found greater enthusiasm for World of Warcraft.
Next survey: Which one's better - neodymium magnets or XML?
I see it at the office. People do not do a lot of work since they have to respond on that blinking icon. E-mail, however also qualified as distracting, gives a chance to schedule your own time.
I used to use a lot of IM (chat with my wife who happened to live at the other side of this planet), and some friends, but nowadays with further apart online times and work, I really prefer e-mail: Less distraction.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Today is the day I realized I was getting old.
In my day we used Prodigy and had to pay for each individual e-mail. It made us consider our words carefully and write deliberately.
In my day, we didn't have fancy tools like Yahoo messenger. If we wanted to be distracted from our work, we had to play minesweeper or flirt with our neighibors. But it prevented us from getting into long distance relationships with flirtatious people we would never meet, gosh darnit.
In my day, we didn't have Google. We had tools like Archie and Gopher. And when we were sick of using those to try and find what we wanted, we asked our neighibors or just looked the darn information up. And sure, it wasn't as good as this newfangled technology they got now. But it was reliable. I tell ya, the dictionary we have has been in our family for over 40 years. It belonged to my grandpappy. And it's never been down, or required rebooting, or been subject to a DDOS attack. Nosirrie. Worst thing that ever happed was little Elsie got Jam on one of the pages and we had to tear it out before it rotted. But noone cares about the meaning of effluvius anyhoo.
I tell ya, kids these days.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
He's dead right, although perhaps not in the way he intended.
IM is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist for quite a lot of people. Instant communication over the network is basically trying to replace:
-Getting up to go talk to the guy (in office environments)
-Calling him on the phone (how many people have cell phones again?)
So for a lot of people, myself included, IM is worthless. If I need instant communication, the phone is faster, simpler, and less hassle all around. Maybe if you lacked always-on connectivity and had to use dialup or something, then I could see the benefit.
But people talk much quicker than they type, on average. So if I need an instant answer, I call the guy instead. Simpler than using a 1 on 1 IM client.
Note that this doesn't apply to chat rooms or IRC or other multi-to-multi text messaging systems. That has some real benefit, solving a problem that doesn't have other good solutions. It's person to person IM that I'm talking about here.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
To act on an IM or phone call, you have to be there, and you have to respond immediately. That means if you're not at your computer or near your phone, you miss the missive. (Yes, there's phone mail, but that's the most annoying form of communication there is--you have to sit through someone's incoherent explanation of what they want in real time, you can't skim it like a long email.)
I use email almost exclusively as a communication tool, and prefer it over all others most of the time. Why? Well, it's the asynchronicity. I don't have to be there the moment it arrives to respond; Email sits there and waits patiently for me if I'm gone when it arrives. Email doesn't interrupt me--i'm free to ignore it if I want--but I can still reply to it later. I can also take my time composing an email message and say just what I want to say.
Sure, my daughter uses IM all the time for talking to her friends--again, IM is clearly a substitute for the telephone, not for email. I don't think IM is intrinsically evil, but some IM programs are certainly a security hazard (she's also already downloaded one very destructive virus from an IM) so I've toyed with the idea of blocking IM from my home network. Unfortunately, Microsoft's IM monster is a port-prober and can't be shut out at the router. That's criminal...but then criminality is nothing new for the Satan of Seattle.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
I have had to remove IM clients from the office computers because people are using them exclusively to send info to each other, and there is no Documentation. Baddddd when you work at a Dr's Office.
I REALLY hate to see what happens when the current teens end up in the workforce. Leaving messages will be passe, If you can't get ahold of someone, it's their fault. Let's see how long that holds up with the boss man.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
IM'ing has its place even in work. Consider all the times you have a quick question for someone in another office ... sure you can call, but that in itself is an inconvenience to the person you're contacting. He has to stop what he's working on and lose his train of thought to pick up the phone (or annoy people around him by using speakerphone -- still losing his train of thought). On the other hand, an IM can be thought of as an email that needs a quick reply. Instead of checking his inbox every half an hour and looking for anything he might need to reply to, he's notified almost instantly that he has a new message, while still being able to get to a quick stopping point before replying. And for those of us who use computers all the time, it's often more comfortable than a phone.
IM'ing can be thought of as an instant form of communication much like telephoning, except without the additional inconvenience of having to drop what you're working on to reply.
By the time these kids grow up, IM and email will be the same thing. They've been becoming closer and closer to the same thing for years.
It *USED* to be that in order to talk to someone with IM, you and they had to be on the computer at the same time. This is no longer the case - on Yahoo IM, for example, you can IM someone who is not online, and they will receive the message later when they do log in (ICQ has done this for ages). It also used to be that IM conversations went away when you were done with them, but all IM applications now have the ability to log conversations to file.
It *USED* to be that when you sent an email, the recipient wouldn't get it until they got back into their office or home and logged in and checked their email. Now lots of people get their emails instantly, all the time, wherever they are, on blackberries or sidekicks or similar devices.
So, if people are receiving email instantly wherever they are, and you can send IMs that can be received later, what's the difference?
Nothing, except tradition and protocol, and that will go away. Email will continue to act more and more like an instant message if the recipient happens to be online when the email is sent, and IM will continue to act more and more like an email if the recipient isnot online when it is sent.
paintball
-- tethered phone line.
/ email.
| IM.
\ sms.
sponsered by kremlin, bbc and the ADD council
He's absolutely right about the consequences, but he misses the actual problem. The problem is that all known IM clients have pitiful interface design. They all present information in a way that is distracting. They all present information in a way that mandates that the user perform some action immediately as a result (either get the window out of the way, or put it in the way so you can read it, then get rid of it). This is compounded by the facts that: 1. People expect a response immediately, because they have no idea what else you may be doing, and 2. People for some reason refuse to put complete thoughts into a single message.
... ...
... when I ...?
Hi
I have a problem
I was wondering if you can help
My computer is acting funny
Whenever I
it
as opposed to
Hey, you know why my computer might
This problem is not alleviated by the use of different status; they actually make it worse. This is because because people tend to immediately send messages whenever there is any change in your status. This encourages people to NOT change their status unless they specifically want to talk to someone. This causes the status to lie as often as not.
That said, all of these save the last could be alleviated by better interface design. I don't know if hooks for the of thing that would be required are integrated in modern desktop managers.
-Amalcon
When it comes to msn messaging, my daughter has the stamina and dedication of an olympic champion. If left to her own devices, she'd be on it all night and into the next day, although I try my best to curb this obsession and read her past conversations when I feel so compelled.
For me, IM's drive me nuts. They're too pushy and I end up with all these contacts of people I can't remember. And it's a great way to get pc viruses and God knows what else!
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
No surprise.
EMAIL works. IM interrupts work.
Amusing, coming from someone who's posting on slashdot.
Email in Async, IM is Sync.
I like to deal with things on my own timeline, thus think Email is better for most things.
I hate the phone, and don't like to be interrupted with IM, maybe that means I'm old.
He's got a really good point !
uhh, whoops...
-- (dah dah) .-. (dit dah dit) ... (dit dit dit)
.... (dit dit dit dit)
.... (dit dit dit dit) .-. (dit dah dit) .. (dit dit)
--- (dah dah dah)
. (dit)
-.-. (dah dit dah dit)
--- (dah dah dah)
-.. (dah dit dit)
. (dit)
--..-- (dah dah dit dit dah dah)
- (dah)
. (dit)
--- (dah dah dah)
- (dah)
. (dit)
-- (dah dah)
(Slashdot wouldn't let me post this message orignally because there were too many "junk characters" in it...ha! I guess I will have to re-write the thing with "dah" and "dit" all over it!)
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
In my office, we use both email and instant messaging. I think that they compliment each other rather well. IM is used when a discussion is needed, and email when documentation is wanted. As simple as that.. Or not.
Of course there are times when discussions occur via email, but IM just gets the job done much easier.
I'm with ya, bro! I stopped hanging out in rooms with other people in them because they expected me to respond when they address me! The nerve!
EMAIL works. IM interrupts work.
Here is a clue for you. Try using the functionality of your IM program and set yourself to "Busy" if yo don't want to be interrupted. Or just don't run IM when you are doing something important. Sheesh.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Well, it's actually quite a wonder which communication technologies gain critical mass and which do not. Think of all of the options that we have - video conferencing, telephony, im, email, blogging.
The thing is that email in some ways is getting replaced by IM (for synchronous, short, personal messages), and on the other end by Blogging, which allows for more asynchronous, mass distributed, media rich content.
Of course, we're taking on a more personal level here. email in the business is still indispensible.
It's possible to use something without being enthused by it. I use Perl and Python, but I'm more enthused by Python, even though I probably use Perl more.
Enthusiasm != use.
By using the message board, I tend to think more, so this must be closer to email. But I can type and have responses quicker, so it is similiar to IM.
What is this "IM" you speak of? Can I use it with my two tin cans?
Oh, come on! How come the first guy who made an "In North Korea" joke didn't get modded up to 5?
Oh... that's right... it would have been the guy who submitted the story.
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
Most people reading this were chatting on BBS years ago (or IRC later on). It should be easy to relate to the teens using IM. I agree with the assessments that teens have different communication needs than adults.
Our customers (who tend to be younger, as in below 30) would love for us to us IM.
We tell them that its not allowed because of company policy. The real reason it is that IM stops you dead in your track and you generally never get anything done. Try to handle a couple of dozen cases and being incesantly interrupted.
Same for e-mails, if its a quick answer then we write back. If the question has a lot of if-then-else's that would take ages to answer and still create confusion, just make a phonecall and sort it out. One e-mail just creates one more e-mail.
Just my $0.02
Whatever happened to the simple phone call?
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2177.html
Slowly gaining support amongst client applications. It's a pity IMAP is just complex enough that no clients really support it as well as they could (especially offline mode), but it's pretty nice still.
Well... not much to type here then.
Cuz as soon as these teens get a job, and have to support themselves financially, then they'll see the wisdom of old fashoned email.
The real world triumphs again.
...for people who understand that the medium follows the message. For some things, IM or SMS is great, but it sucks for longer text where you need a little time to think and include references. Mail is great for those, but it isn't as personal as a letter, and even though my snail-mail usage is maybe one letter a month, I do prefer love letters to love e-mails.
Same thing with the voice mediums - the phone is a great invention, but for some things I still prefer face-to-face talk. Again, saying "I love you" on the phone is nice, but saying it while deeply looking into someone's eyes is an entirely different kind of thing.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Loser.
This makes sense until you realize that the sample set was all girls. Once you factor that in, it's hardly surprising to find that 66% of their siblings were male.
Why? Is there a tendency to select a second child to be the opposite gender of the first (presumably via abortion)?
In the 80s in the US, electronic phones were first starting to replace conventional phones. Conventional phones used carbon transmitter, magnetostrictive receiver, a custom transformer, resistors and capacitors. But they did use electronics in two places: varistors across the receiver to protect you from loud clicks, and varistors in the network to equalize speech volume on short and long loops.
It took a while when phones were invented, for people to figure out proper etiquette for phone conversations too. IIRC, there was even a debate for a while over whether the proper greeting was 'hello' or 'ahoy'.
If exactly half of all children are male and the other half female and you ask only the females what sex their sibs (if any) are, you're gonna get an overwhelmingly biased response.
Do the math.
thank you, that was one of the most useful and thoughtful replies i've ever gotten to a post of mine ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nope. Statistical bias.
If exactly half of all children are male and the other half female and you ask only the females what sex their sibs (if any) are, you're gonna get an overwhelmingly biased response.
Do the math.
OK. Assuming that each family examined contains 2 siblings, there are four possible and equally likely pairings: MM, MF, FM and FF.
So, for any sample of (say) 100 such families, we expect there to be 25 girls who are the second of an MF pair, 25 who are the first of an FM pair, 25 who are the first of an FF pair, and 25 who are the second of an FF pair. Of these 100 girls, the first 50 have male siblings, and the last 50 have female siblings.
I don't see the problem.
To tap her phone line and pay her friends to tell her what's she's said too.
+++
Cache In, Trash Out!
IRC is an IM system for all intents and purposes. It does pretty much all of the same things, just happens to be one with bigger focus on groupchat that person-to-person, and no offline storage.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Let's assume four possibilities: MM, MF, FM, FF. Now, we're not asking about females who are the second of a pairing, just about females and their sibs. The 1/4 of the overall set that are MM will never be asked anything. That leaves FM, MF and FF. Hmmm . . . whaddya know? There's twice as many brothers as sisters out there!
Remember -- we are only interviewing girls about their siblings (it was an all-girl school, remember?), not a random sampling from the overall sample set. In effect, we're not getting a truly representative sample set.
Now, we're not asking about females who are the second of a pairing, just about females and their sibs.
You misread my argument. I'll clarify it here:
The 1/4 of the overall set that are MM will never be asked anything. That leaves FM, MF and FF. Hmmm . . . whaddya know? There's twice as many brothers as sisters out there!
No, there aren't. Let's break those three pairs down:
Pair 1 (FM) has person 1a(F) and person 1b(M). We will ask person 1a, who is F, and the response will be M.
Pair 2 (MF) has person 2a(M) and person 2b(F). We will ask person 2b, who is F, and the response will be M. That's 2xM, 0xF.
Pair 3 (FF) has person 3a(F) and person 3b(F). We will ask person 3a, who is F, and the response will be F. 2xM, 1xF. Then we ask person 3b (which you seemed to forget to do in your survey, which is a little strange, seeing as you're supposed to be asking all the girls), and the response will be F, so the totals are 2 male and 2 female. Still no problem.
Remember -- we are only interviewing girls about their siblings (it was an all-girl school, remember?), not a random sampling from the overall sample set. In effect, we're not getting a truly representative sample set.
Yes, but if gender of sibling is independent of gender of subject (which we would normally assume it to be, in absence of any known cause of bias), then it doesn't matter: for the purpose of finding sibling's genders, asking only female subjects is equivalent to taking a random sample.
Now there are biases that might exist: parents might be more likely to have an abortion if both their children would be the same gender (which would bias the result towards male), and I believe some people have medical conditions that cause them to only have children of a particular gender (which would bias the result towards female), but I'm guessing that both of these are fairly insignificant, and probably cancel each other fairly well anyway.
It would seem so, until the statistic-gathering process realizes that in the (FF) pairing it has asked about the same family, a situation which won't arise in the (FM) and (MF) pairings.