What’s wrong with e-mail instead of Groups or Circles?

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I’ve just read Woody’s brilliant exposure of Google+ and Facebook, which confirmed my worst suspicions. My only surprise is that he will continue using both. The restrained ways in which he will do that sound as though they match quite closely what I do by having a number of labelled mailing-lists in Thunderbird. I can respect addressees’ privacy by selecting BCC for the list I’m using, and I haven’t had to disclose anything about myself in order to use Thunderbird. Well, my IP and email address maybe, but they are changeable: and I don’t care who knows I’m still using XP

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The answer to your title question is rather simple – it comes down to organization. I receive hundreds of emails per day… your email to me very well may get overlooked. Also, I tend to not use my business email for personal use and vice versa. Lastly, you organize your email one way, and other people organize (or don’t) their email another way. The use of Groups or Circles separates those communications in distinct yet uniform ways.

Incidentally, using Groups or Circles it is difficult to send a message to the wrong ‘Jennifer’ or ‘Bob’, especially if you have auto-fill turned on in your email client for contacts.

Surely now you begin to see there are many additional reasons to use Groups or Circles instead of, or in addition to, email.

(Personally I prefer Instant Message – but NOT text messages nor PMs via websites/services.)

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A social network is an easy way to keep in touch with friends and family and see what’s happening. It can be interesting and fun if used responsibly. Email is used to convey more complex issues to just certain individuals or groups whereby social networks are used to convey little tidbits that aren’t important enough to write an email, at least for me.

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The big advantage to most social networks over email… less spam! Most networks I belong to have very strong safeguards against spammers. I’m also a moderator on a social network specifically oriented to diabetes, and we have a very strick policy about advertising. We just don’t allow it. The site also allows folks to select what kind of information each person focuses on…

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The big advantage to most social networks over email… less spam! Most networks I belong to have very strong safeguards against spammers. I’m also a moderator on a social network specifically oriented to diabetes, and we have a very strick policy about advertising. We just don’t allow it. The site also allows folks to select what kind of information each person focuses on…

I will add that one reason for using social networks is indicated by the ‘social’ in the name. I enjoy ‘meeting’ people all over the world, with varied viewpoints on many subjects; it’s a bit like a club only a cyber one, and you can make it inclusive or exclusive. Obviously I’m not talking about work use here.
I have engaged in really interesting discussions that I would never have the opportunity for in any other way. Sometimes I see a friend is online and can then ‘Skype’ him/her. In a nutshell, it expands the horizons.

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As indicated, social sites allow for much more robust interactions than email exchanges or traditional chat exchanges. This all takes place in an environment where folks can collaborate and post to each others’ pages if we desire that. The interaction is multi-party and can be almost instantaneous. And the points about keeping everyone and everything organized are good to note. The visual presentation of arranged images, songs or soundbites, videos and postings can be much more expressive than is possible with blogs, FlickR, YouTube, chat or email by themselves.

Keeping various groups of friends up to date but not revealing anything which is not important to them can be a great tool. Just as long as we don’t over-share and make folks feel uncomfortable. After all, spam is in the eyes of the receivers.

-- rc primak

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I like email, but I also use Facebook, mainly because a lot of people I know use it too. For instance, two families I know had new babies this week. I got the news about one of them because they sent round an email to their friends, but the others put a post on Facebook, and I might still have not heard about it without looking there.

Ian

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