Shorts: Social Networking Beats E-mail, Web Guy vs. Angry Staff

One of the comments from Transparency Camp, "E-mail is broken." I agree, but even if you don't think it's broke, I bet you're using e-mail very differently than you did just a year or two ago.

From Read Write Web:

Nielsen Online, an analytics firm that tracks time spent online at various websites, has issued a report finding that throughout 2008 social networking sites and blogs saw more time spent by users than personal email.

Youth watchers have long argued that for young people, email is how you communicate with elders in formal situations, while social networks and SMS are the preferred method of communication among peers. Nielsen found, however, that Facebook in particular saw greater growth among older people than it did among the young.

"This shift has primarily been driven by Facebook, whose greatest growth has come from people aged 35-49 years (+24.1 million). From December 2007 through December 2008, Facebook added almost twice as many 50-64 year old visitors (+13.6 million) than it had under-18 year old visitors (+7.3 million)." -- Read the rest.

E-mail remains a critical communications tool, but if dot-gov is going to go where people are spending their time, social networking sites need to be considered as a part of the strategy mix.

Second, please, please, PLEASE see the very funny blog entry from the Smithsonian. Michael Edson put together a very funny, very true animation cataloging the reasons why social media has no place in government. If you have come up against a roadblock in your agency, get a laugh and some very good responses to common concerns--like losing control, what if it's wrong, we have been doing it this way for a long time, blah blah blah. See the Smithsonian 2.0 blog.