Messaging Fatigue & the New Convergence

In the US at least, people are talking on the phone less, “tweeting” and texting more, and still getting mountains of email, some of it produced by the vast array of new and old social networks we are now expected to follow. Social networking and social media has its benefits; we’re beginning to see some of its costs, however.

Can a person really be faulted for not getting to every tweet, email, call, Facebook message, invite? After all, the dog needs to be let out and there’s nothing in the fridge. With the release of the iPhone 4 and Apple’s unified mail client, we’ve begun to see that more companies are picking up on “messaging fatigue” as an issue.

Another really interesting development from Google is the idea that not ALL messages have high importance (for example, the tweet “Dude, that was so boss LOL”). Google’s introduced a beta of Priority Inbox (see video below), which looks at your mail, but also the actions you take on messages from specific recipients or types of recipients, and prioritizes future messages accordingly.

Another interesting development in a trend which will probably strengthen in the next year.