Over the years I've felt like a lone wolf asking organizations about
their e-mail outreach strategy as if it was more important than their
use of social networking.
Many who are always connected, particularly technology and
communications folks, have let their e-mail boxes get so out of
control they would rather invest scare resources in a Facebook Fan
page over a reliably produced e-mail newsletter.
Well, the truth is that it is not an either or option, but now that
Facebook and Twitter have become so popular, they are now "streams"
rather than reliable ways to reach the people who at one point said
they wanted to "follow" you. People dip into the stream created by
their friends and those they find interesting when they are thirsty
... often in their scarce idle time. They feel no obligation to drink
from the end of the fire hose they have friended and followed. While
open rates on e-mail newsletters and e-list posts are often small,
most people still scan the subject lines because they know that most
people who e-mail them personally still expect some kind of response.
(When I meet someone who says, I e-mailed you X months ago and I
missed it ... I feel bad. Not so with status updates.)
Hence, this new feature by Facebook which allows you to reply to
comment e-mail alerts by e-mail is a huge acknowledgment that e-mail
rules supreme when it comes to both keeping someone's close attention
(with alerts) and to generate more participation. I didn't expect this
feature based on my assumption that Facebook really needs you to come
into their web site for an advertising hit. Of course, soon we might
see advertising embedded with the alerts. What this feature, now that
e-mail alerts on comments seems to be a default setting, will do is
raise the percentage of people commenting regularly and
demographically serve the over 30 crowd quite well.
Comment on Facebook through e-mail
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-383475.html
On a related note:
WebProNews: People 18-24 Would Rather Give Up Social Networks Than Email
http://bit.ly/yypY8
(although it was a small sample)
Finally, would someone tell Ning to get with the program and turn
their e-mail alerts on comments at least to full text as well as let
people reply via e-mail.
What both Facebook and Ning lack (I think) is the ability to post a
new comment or status update via e-mail. So while the Facebook change
is laudable, it is only once people can start something new via e-mail
that they will be providing full service. For that option you need to
look at sites like http://posterous.com where you blog by e-mail or
http://E-Democracy.org use of GPL open source http://groupserver.org
for our Issues Forum where people can do almost everything via e-mail
that they can via the web by design. From a democracy and
participation perspective, technology choice through a unified online
public space is what it is all about.
Steven Clift
Steven Clift - http://stevenclift.com
Executive Director - http://E-Democracy.Org
Follow me - http://twitter.com/democracy
New Tel: +1.612.234.7072