To follow up the Tipping Point blog I will highlight another part of the book I found very interesting. Remember the posts a while back about electronic communication and how it is the devil? Here comes more.
Beware of Immunity of Communication.
Communication is always changing. New and better ways to deliver messages are always appearing. First think of the fax machine. That is a great invention. The author points out that unlike commodities, when a means of communication becomes more prevalent the value of that items increases with the prevalence. Think about it. The more fax machines there are, the more value your fax machine has because it becomes more useful. That is the opposite of commodities where more of an item usually decreases the cost… more wheat, cheep wheat. That first fax machine was worth nothing because it couldn’t fax anything. The second fax machine made the first one worth much more, and so on and on.
The same with the phone.
When people plan how to get their product or information out in the world they carefully think of the most effective, inexpensive way to market. The phone became a beautiful connector for all things. And so we have the telemarketer. In the beginning this worked like taking candy from a baby. Can you imagine the first telemarketer that called and tried to sale you knives. “Well these knives have to be great because they cared enough to call my house to tell me about them!!!” But now look at what has happen. No call lists. Call weighting. And of course endless jokes about how to “stick it to” the caller.
Telemarketer: Hello, is this Mr. Greene?
Me: Yes
Telemarkter: lksd;flkaj dlkjf ;aslkj lakjsd ;flkja sf insurance a;slkdjf aks best deal ever a;lksdj f;lkjas f bye now.
Me: I’m in the middle of dinner can you give me your number so I can call you at home later tonight?
Or my favorite.
Telemarketer: Hello, Is Mr. Greene there?
Me: No, he is in the shower
Telemarketer: Is Mrs. Greene there?
Me: No, she is too. (hahahahaha)
Telemarketer: Ok, just leave them a message that their accountant needs to speak with them.
Me: Crap, I’m sorry.
What has happened is we have developed immunity to communication and receiving information on the phone. And the same thing will happen to twitter. It is so great right now to be able to know everyones thoughts all the time… but at a critical point it will become too much. We will turn from our 150 word updates and again rely on what we know and love the most. Personal, face to face, human interaction.
I think the same thing happened with this blog. Too many bloggers, not enough time, “I quit”.
I’ll take your silence as agreement.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
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5 comments:
first off, its "call waiting", not "weighting".
second, you finally got me to post something by talking about twitter. well done.
I agree that twitter is not the end-all, be-all of human communication. However, for you naysayers out there, it is an amazingly simple and amazingly innovative way to get information. To me, Twitter is a communication enhancer. Im not going to message people back and forth and rely sol
y on twitter to keep in touch with someone, but the little tidbits you learn and random events that go on that people twa. . . , i mean tweet, about gives you added insight into that person's life and has actually stimulated much conversation with people that i follow. I think twitter has more lasting power than AIM (who does that anymore?) because it isnt as time consuming and is much more portable and flexible. Of course it is going to evolve, but i think the basic idea of twitter will continue to exist for a long time.
I think the problem - along with the problem of telemarketing - is the commercialization of these modes of communication. Because they are popular, companies exploit them to make money off of them. Twitter is already getting that feeling of getting bogged down with corporate tweeting and random porn followers who want you to visit their websites. So I don't think the problem in itself is that too many people use it, its that that too many people use it so people begin trying to exploit it and make money off of it. This cheapens the experiences and detracts from the initial pure intention of relaying info between people and enhancing relationships.
That was way more than 140 characters.
twitter works because it is so simple and user-driven. quite simply, it is whatever you want it to be in 140 characters or less. that is the genius of the interface. it has so easily been integrated through social media, adapted to multiple purposes, and become the subject of pop culture references and a favorite of celebrities.
the test will be if twitter can grow and adapt like facebook has. right now, it is basically a company with 40 employees. when the company is ultiamtely sold, it will be interesting to see what it is like when it truly becomes corporate.
btw, doesn't your theory also apply to facebook which has only had a sustained period of growth thus far?
So electronic communication is not dead yet. Clearly the two biggest tweets who read this blog got the information and responded very quickly. There are great advantages.
This could apply to facebook. Both twitter and facebook are still going up. I don't think they have peaked yet. Definitely not twitter. But at some point it will happen.
commercialization of communication. I like the thought brian.
I agree with Brian -- when people starting exploiting electronic communication for money, it can go downhill. Look at MySpace -- ick. Hopefully twitter will avoid this same fate.
I don't use twitter, but if I did I think it would have a diminishing rate of return. It would be really cool for a while, but if lots of people tried to communicate with me solely through tweets, I would just give up. It's kind of like email -- the more emails I have, the more overwhelmed I feel and the less likely I am to send a timely response. So, I think I agree with Clayton that at a certain point we all get frustrated with communication and decide we'd rather cut out the "middle man" of technology and just talk face to face.
Kristen, I think the same thing you are saying about twitter - that being bombarded by all that information from all kinds of people would eventually get overwhelming and more of a chore than a joy - applies also to face-to-face conversations.
There are few things I hate more in life than when somebody invites like 30 people to chili's for their birthday, and then everyone sits around a huge table and tries to talk to people. It's useless and overwhelming. There are random people and random information spewing from every direction, and in the end you get like 5 minutes of small talk with the person whose birthday it is.
This is like what Twitter can become if you let and what facebook has pretty much already become for me. An overload of useless info and communication that pollutes the real reason for you being there in the first place - which is to deepen relationships and learn new things from interesting sources and meaningful people.
Eventually the information and enjoyment you glean from the experience is outweighed by the work and frustration you have to go through to get it, and so you simply stop going to birthday dinners at chili's with 30 other people.
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