Marco Bertozzi:23.03.10

Inspired by a meeting today with Harriet Dennys from Mediaweek I started to think about the speed of communication that surrounds us.

Along came email, no more letters or faxes needed. Everything sped up that little bit more, having said that we still held on much longer than we needed to before giving in to sending everything via email. There were concerns at the time that it was too informal and hard copy was more professional.

At around this time we received our news via the hard copy trade titles, it was a sign of position if you were able to receive a copy of Campaign and people waited with baited breath to see what would be said about them or their clients or their competitors. Now we receive our news via Twitter feeds, Linkedin, Facebook, we sign up to far more feeds than we would ever have contemplated reading, we cherry pick. News on demand.

Today I was asked if I thought email Bulletins were too slow? Amazing thought, to imagine that we are even considering that a daily email bulletin is too slow. Harriet was right though, in some respects a daily bulletin is too slow, news is everywhere, it’s on demand, its in feeds. People everywhere are aggregating all of these feeds into one location and getting it fed to them night and day, minute by minute and that is creating another effect..promiscuity!

Like search, do you care where you get your information from as long as its correct or first? Look at the myriad of Twitter feeds, most of them are just swirling the same content around so do you wait for your favourite feed to appear with the news that interests you or just click on the first? I click on the first and I bet many others do as well. It’s all changing, its faster, its more and more digital and it is all making even a Bulletin feel slow..someone stick the brakes on!

It does not stop at news, it’s the same with email. Many media companies are also communicating via messenger both internally and externally – why? It’s quicker than email..how much quicker can it get? It’s not just the mechanic but also the expectation – are we not all on email via BB or iPhone, why would it take that long to reply? How long do we all now wait before expecting a response? Ok its 10pm but he could just fire me back a quick response couldn’t he? Email is not slow, it’s now the users that are judged for their speed of response!

I am out of breath just writing this and during the time it has taken i have received about 100 feed updates, 5 emails at 11.30pm (damn the US) and 1 text. Where will it end? Thanks HD for the inspiration!

As a follow up – check Craig Robinsons response to this blog @ http://www.swissss.com