The Changing Face of Interpersonal Communication

There's a lot of talk about how the Internet is changing the way we communicate, but I wanted to share a real-world example of what that means.

I've got a business colleague and friend who I've known for a few years. He's a great guy to know, both a good person and an absolute genius when it comes to all things related to digital media delivery.

But he can be a difficult guy to get a hold of. I can't tell you how many futile phone calls I've made and emails I've sent trying to reach him with questions large and small.

It's always been extremely frustrating, but at the same time understandable. He's currently CTO of an ad network, a job that requires him to put in massive hours and respond to an endless stream of requests for his time. He just doesn't have the time to answer all the calls and emails he receives, so he ends up having to ignore those that are not directly related to his day-to-day activities otherwise he'd be totally overwhelmed.

So for the longest time I gave up hope of getting quick answers from him, until I learned something: he's a huge user of Twitter and IM.

Now that I've discovered this, I'm following him on Twitter, a microblogging site where users input posts of less than 160 characters to describe their current status. By following him I now get regular updates as to where he is and what he's doing, helping me understand if I have any chance of reaching him at all.

I've also got myself back onto instant messaging (I jumped off that train a few years back when I found myself having multiple meaningless conversations about stuff that didn't matter). Now, if I see him online, I can send him a quick note and more times than not jump right into a conversation with him.

So I've gone from not being able to reach him at all to knowing where he is and being only a mouse-click away from chatting.

It's a remarkable turn of events and demonstrates both the power of these Internet applications as well as how the habits of the under-40 sect are revolutionizing the way we use technology for interpersonal communication.