I received an email today with a most interesting idea that was centered around the following statement:
Because email is becoming increasingly unreliable, we will be making all major announcements and updates on Twitter.
I’m not sure that I understand how or even if email is becoming increasingly unreliable. Perhaps what they are worried about is being caught in SPAM filters which I find are getting better all the time. Better about not having false readings as well as better at catching real SPAM. Moving to Twitter though seems a poor choice regardless.
I suppose if your audience is following a very small number of people Twitter may be a good way of reaching them. Sometimes. But if they are only following a few accounts they are probably also reading twitter less often. One hopes this organization is not moving to Direct Messages on Twitter. That would truly be annoying at least to me.
I follow a lot of people (that is to say they are listed as people I follow) but most often use a Twitter list to filter out a majority of the traffic which I just could not keep up with. I scan the full feed, look more closely at a select list, and look closely at notifications of people referring to me or taking action with my tweets. I don’t have time in the day to read every tweet by everyone I follow. It’s just not possible.
So do I miss a lot? Of course. But there is still plenty of interesting things to read. No one has to drink the whole output of a fire hose to get all the water they need. And that brings me back to the idea of using Twitter as the communication path of first resort. A lot of people are going to miss a lot of what one sends unless they are closely watching that one particular account (or perhaps one particular hashtag) all of the time.
At least with email people tend to at least scan the subjects of everything that comes though. People miss a lot on Twitter. The way Facebook handles things it is not much (if any) better. Only a small percentage of friends will see every post one makes on Facebook.
Seems to me like email is still the best way for things you want to reach everyone whose contact information you have acquired. Just don’t SPAM them and get into trouble with filters.