I made an observation about how people seem to be using Facebook these days – perhaps seeded by Bray’s presentation. I’ve already mentioned that it seems to be the case that people enjoy maintaining their social networks on Facebook and MySpace because they go there for socialization and this way everything to do with that style of interaction stays in one place. In this first layer, people use the Wall for conversations that (hopefully) they want to (or don’t mind) being public – inviting others who are interested ala the water cooler. One level deeper and you have messages – things that are to be private, but still social centered. Leaving the social network, there is personal email – now where all your signups land. Email seems to now be used for more private messages and for old schoolers. This is all on the old school “larger than hand” devices – but in hand held land, txt and IM still reign, but where are they fitting? They are private and fast, but because they are used on personal devices, the messages may also be in that personal/social realm.
Of course, hand helds are doing much more than just IM and txt, there are also apps for the social networks and email, so the line between these layers are blurred yet again by the ubergadget, the communications device that increasingly will be able to manage all modes of human communication.
Ok, all that is out of the brain… back to Simpsons
Leave a Reply