[CAnet - news] Never Email Anyone Over 30

For more information on this item please visit my blog at 
http://billstarnaud.blogspot.com/
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>From Andrew McAfee's blog

http://blog.hbs.edu/faculty/amcafee/index.php/faculty_amcafee_v3/never_email
_anyone_over_30/


Never Email Anyone Over 30


A while back I wrote a post speculating about the collaboration technologies
today's college students will expect to use when they enter the workforce. I
guessed that today's collegians will want to continue their use of social
networking tools on the job-that they won't consider these tools to be only
suitable for 'play time,' but rather as important (integral?) parts of their
day. More recently, I wrote a couple posts about Facebook, the social
networking site that's become wildly popular on many college campuses and is
now penetrating the rest of society. 

Frank Gilbane recently used Facebook itself to gather data about young
people's expectations for collaborationware. He made use of Facebook's
polling feature, which lets a member ask a single question, then specify the
desired number of respondents and their demographics (gender, age, location,
etc.). Facebook advertises the poll only to members who match these
demographics, then summarizes responses as they come in and presents them to
the asker. It looks like a nifty feature, and I might well use it myself.

Gilbane asked "Which collaboration technologies will you use most in your
job in two years?" He first asked 25-34 year olds, then 18-24 year olds (500
of each). 

The largest difference, and a statistically significant one, is that the
younger crowd has less faith that email will continue to dominate. As a
group, the 18-24 year olds plan to make more use of text messaging (a
channel technology) and social networking sites (primarily a platform
technology, although Facebook does allow communication over private
channels). Interestingly, they seem less enthusiastic about instant
messaging than does the older set.

Gilbane's findings don't result from a rigorously constructed and
administered survey, but I still think they have validity. They correspond
tightly with stories and anecdotes I've been hearing, from many quarters,
about the generational shift in technology use. Evidence is mounting that
younger people don't think of the Internet as a collection of content that
other people produce for them to consume. Instead, they think about it as a
dynamic, emergent, and peer-produced repository to which they're eager to
contribute.

Will corporate Intranets be ready for them? Should they be?


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