I have learned that for me, e-mail is broken. I may get an email that I need to respond to. Then right away I may get 60 or 70 other emails that will shove the important email below the scroll. It goes off my radar.
All of a sudden, I find that one important email falls between the cracks and I don’t end up getting back to a person. This is bad. I get too many emails where people expect me to read it right away and act right away.
The device which has really come through for me is my mobile phone and the ability to text message. Not too many people text message me; compared to my over abundance of email. Text messages come to me right away. (My Samsung Blackjack doesn’t have push email.) Text messages, by their nature, are quick and easy to respond to.
I’m able to give text messages a higher response priority then my email. I’ll respond right away.
It was interesting when Chris Wetherell on a recent episode of the Merlin Show and Justine Ezarik on a recent episode of MacBreak Weekly confirmed this communications phenomenon.
With Twitter, people can have the updates of their friends and family go right to their mobile phones via text messages. If people can constrain themselves to only follow their close friends (and not 1000 people) with Twitter, text messaging may help Twitter take off because it takes advantage of the high priority that people put on text messages.
Oatmeal Stout - Justin Thorp's blog 