Media Badger, Social Media Research & Consultants

Why Email is Still the Killer App of Social Media

Because it’s boring. Email is boring.

But more people use email than Facebook or Twitter. Combined. Every day. Still.

Email spans a wider demographic range than any other social technology application. We’re already seeing (in our own research and others) that age groups are defining social technologies…more on that later.

Email is ridiculously simple and it’s boring. Across many age groups, we’ve mastered email, whether that’s via a Web interface like Gmail or Hotmail or if we have an email client like Mail or Entourage or Thunderbird. Most of us already have our various “groups” that we send stuff to. We don’t think about it, we just “forward”, “reply” or create new, copy/paste or drag/drop and hit “send.” And we’re done. Boring. That’s when social change comes about from a technology; when it becomes boring.

Jody Williams won a nobel peace prize for land mine activism – mostly using email and faxes. Two boring technologies.

The phone eventually enabled the ability to have 911 service, of which a TV show was created. Because it was boring and we all knew how to dial a phone. In the 1930’s phones were pretty much banned in offices.

Facebook is not an email “killer” because it’s still complicated and not boring yet. Same thing with Twitter.

A new social media technology that is now pretty much boring is SMS/txt messaging and perhaps the first instance of txt messaging benefiting society was Haiti – that most of the money raised in the US, Canada and UK was through SMS donations. In the 2005 Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, it was txt messaging that played the key role in gathering people to protest the election results and promoted democracy. It’s getting boring.

So, what do you think? Is email still the number one social technology?

Can Social Media Tools Catch A Killer?

On Saturday afternoon of September 27th, a 14 year old Canadian girl, popular daughter of a Pastor was horrifically slain walking in the woods near her house in Edson, Alberta. It is believed there may have been two boys as witnesses who ran for help. Sadly, help arrived too late to save her.

The towns residents, understandably, are in an uproar. Many are speaking of tracking the murderer down themselves – vigilante justice. The RCMP are urging the residents to wait and let them work. In an interesting move, the kids have engaged a Social Media tool to try and scare the killer out of hiding. Text Messaging.

Text messages via mobile phones have been traveling around the teens network within the town, according to a story on CBC national radio this morning. The kids are using TXT SMS messages to hopefully scare the murderer with warning messages that the killer would be safer to turn themselves in than be caught by any of the parents on the hunt.

Could a Social Media tool play a key role in catching a killer? Perhaps. It may not be the only way, but it shows that as a society, we are continuing to find innovative ways to use Social Media services to advance our lives and society. Such action is purely ad hoc with no formal organization. A common purpose united a group to use a device and service that didn’t exist 10-20 years ago to participate in a collective action supporting their small community. These teenagers would have had serious limitations on their ability to help in solving the case. Now they are applying peer pressure in the hopes of playing a part in bringing a murderer to justice. Once the killer is caught, perhaps we will learn if this application of Social Media helped?