Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?"
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.
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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.
Aye. You are correct, sir.
At the last company I worked for (a startup), I set up a jabber server on the local network, one that would be accessible over the VPN, too. It was extremely handy for those times where someone was offsite, perhaps visiting a customer, working from home or travelling somewhere and you just needed to ask a quick question or get a quick status. We used jabber server and GAIM clients so the cost was free (apart from setup time and a little account and log maintenance from time to time).
When it was first turned up, there was some neat-o factor involved, but eventually it became part of the communications mix. While I can't point to any really obvious places where "IM saved us money or a customer account", having it as a part of the mix certainly improved efficiency.
I'd be interested in knowing what other slashdotters have experienced when they've added IM to their communications mix, or had it available from the get-go.
.. 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
Do any of the current IM clients send each keystroke?
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.
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 run a network of around 500+ users/computers and I'm not saying this is true everywhere but our IM traffic is around 95% non work related. It's just a bunch of boredom relieving noise. I know this because I sniff, log and monitor all the conversations. Some of the gossip is quite entertaining too.
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
--Mike Perry, Seattle
IM is still relatively spam-free. Wait until it gets bogged down with spam.
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
Current incarnations of IM are, for the most part, more like "write" than "talk". Some are proprietary and some are not. There are many clients that speak multiple protocols, allowing one to reign in the insanity just a little bit and talk to one's friends regardless of their choice of client (within limits, of course). Typically they keep a conversation history, which allows you to keep some idea of what's going on, but isn't the level of interactivity you saw with "talk". More like a scroll-back buffer.
I wouldn't say anything about the functionality of most of the IM clients is revolutionary in any meaningful sense. Some allow you to send pictures and whatnot, giving them a certain IRC-ness. Some allow you to spawn other networked programs (e.g. games) and automatically pass your friend's IP. Of course, since everyone lives behind a firewall these days, that's pretty much useless. I've seen one at least that includes a shared white-board for multiple users, which is pretty cool. Needless to say, that's not one that's in common use, though. So, in summary, what makes these IMs "better" than write or talk were? Sexy GUI interface.
Almost everything anyone does as a human being, whether they know it or not, is ultimately intended to raise their position in the social structure and/or score, because they are life forms whose overriding goal is to pass on their genetic material to the next generation as much as possible.
What do you talk about? The meaning of life? Eternal salvation? Your projects at work? It's all bullshit. You're just an egotistical asshole who thinks that whatever he believes is important is, in fact, important. It's about the same as when you were a teenager, except your perspective has shifted a little.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
That's crap.
... People usually speak proper English in e-mail
The mindset of e-mail is presentation, hence why e-mail clients have spell checkers.
Yeah? I get emails from all sorts of people with poor spelling and use of crazy abbreviations. My mother does this.
On the other hand, I use IM to communicate with all my college friends, and we all write reasonably correct, if conversational English when using it, just as we do in e-mails.
Both IM and e-mail, when used in the hands of children, will contain bastardized English. When used for business purposes, or by people who give a shit, it will contain proper English.
One day, kids will learn that the way they're writing makes them looks like idiots, just like whatever generation you're in learned how stupid a lot of the stuff they were doing is. The world isn't going to hell in a hand-basket, and IM isn't going to be the downfall of civilization, any more than the telephone was when letter writing was the primary form of communication. You can get off your high horse now.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
hehe... not too bad of an idea... do me a favor... come down here.. and explain to the belgian governemnt that being 17 years old it is a necessity to be able to drive a car... or tell them to expand the public transportation to a point where i can go study with my friend who lives across town without having to spent an hour each way on public transportation... cuz without either of those 2 being done... chance of us getting together and studying are limited to school hours... which we take full advantage of....
I may be wrong but you're downright ugly!