Future trends in business communications: Phone stops ringing, eMail slows down, Social Nets & Media explode

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

I don't know about you but I have been observing a significant shift in how people communicate, professionally as well as socially and privately.  While only 7-10 years ago, most of the work was done on the phone (I recall living in .com boom-town numero uno, San Francisco, and using up all my 2000 AT&T minutes every single month!), eMail soon became big with everyone, and now eMail is still pretty much the prime vehicle of business communications - thus the rise of blackberry mania. Use of the phone declined heavily as a result.

Now, it seems that... well, eMail is for old people.  About 18 months ago, the use of 'social' business platforms such as LinkedIn became more prevalent, and all of a sudden people started to have 'professional' conversations on LinkedIn, Ryze (remember??), Xing, and then, soon, Facebook, Myspace, and now... Twitter, Skype and GTalk.  Now, for me, it has already become the No. 1 method of how people reach out to me: rather than calling (ouch) or even emailing (ehem), people ping me via my various networks - and I think this will increase drastically because it provides a build-in filter as you have to be in my network to ping me via the Network.

This, below, is how I see this developing - and this will have vast consequences for business communications, going forward. Needless to say... I do have some ideas, here. Talk back!

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Comments

[mike ashworth]

Hi Gerd, Interesting observations.

I think that the telephony, email and the social stuff will eventually converge on the phone itself.

People will be able to know (privacy permitting) who are near to them. I don't think we are too far away from this maybe 2 years, for it all to hang together well.

No more "socialising from your Pc whilst sat at your desk" as one person put it a while back.

"Web 3.0 - back down the pub"

Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK

Boosting Sales for Small and Medium Sized Businesses by
helping them find, attract and keep Customers.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeashworth
http://MichaelAshworth.wordpress.com

[Lee Jarvis]

Hi Gerd,

Interesting observation here! Something HAS been different that I have been feeling myself but I've been unable to put a finger on it (or put it into words).

One of the reasons I am liking social networks more and email less is the concentration of what is important to me. In email, 95% of it is junk / chainmail / everyday boring stuff from 'old friends'. In one of my networks, it's a wealth of info on music, media and marketing - articles and blogs that I really learn from, and I love to learn :)

[Louise]

Yo Gerd,

This has got me thinking, I do believe that social network communication is on the rise, however unless there is one network that everyone takes to, then email will always be number one. It bothers me having to update across a number of networks, but different circles are on different networks. They are getting there with software that can post to a number of these sites at once (ping.fm/artistdata.com) but they're not always suitable. There also is the hurdle of how much information you want to share with your colleges, for example, I'm not keen on having my facebook page exposed to people I'm working with because it starts to cross boundries between working life and private. But I guess it can be argued that it depends on where you work and what business you're in...

sorry, this ended up being quite a long thought!