The Digital Generation and the Waning Importance of Email
Last week I was having a lot of conversations around the changing habits of my generation in relation to email. One of those conversations proved fruitful with a college friend of mine who said:
I get all of my work done through facebook and myspace. I don’t even use email anymore.
Now, this friend wasn’t talking about “hanging out” online. This friend does marketing on college campuses.
The very next day, I came across this article, discussing the demise of email in generation m. My favorite quote, is the last paragraph from a Ms. Kirah up at Microsoft:
For that reason, she says bosses should go right ahead and use their e-mail — and should not feel threatened by IM.
“Like parents, they try to control their children,” she says. “But companies really need to respond to the way people work and communicate.”
The focus, she says, should be the outcome.
“Nine to 5 has been replaced with ‘Give me a deadline and I will meet your deadline,’ ” Ms. Kirah says of young people’s work habits. “They’re saying ‘I might work until 2 a.m. that night. But I will do it all on my terms.’ “
And, I can’t agree more. This drives down one of my earlier posts talking about the changing perception of time. Our generation grew up with the internet, using it as a knowledge tool throughout our entire lives. Instant messaging enables fast collaboration, worldwide. Social networking sites ensure you can always find collaboration partners no matter where they are. Thus, having to “know” an email address (which may change due to a wedding, new job, etc) is becoming a thing of the past.
Managing digital natives is as easy as saying: here’s your deadline, get it done. We’ll take off on a worldwide information tour gathering the best feedback for the project, quickly and effeciently. Because, due to tools like Facebook, not only do we know where to find each other, but we know what jobs everyone is doing and what skills they have aquired.
We’ll get the best answers and solutions to the problem or project. Then, see you in the presentation 
(A quick early morning follow up: JP Rangaswami did a great follow up from London last night check it out)
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