About 5 years ago, the central communication vehicles used through the computer were MSN and Email. If you wanted to send a friend an invitation to a birthday or event, a colourful email would have been sufficient enough. Or you could advertise the event and its details in your MSN display name, for all of your contacts to see. If you had pictures to share from vacation or updates about your journey from traveling in Japan, for example, a simple email would be the easiest way to do so. Sitting in your college dorm room, talking over MSN and sending joke emails to your friends was highly common.
When the most popular Internet communication site Facebook was created, this need for emailing on a daily basis seemed to diminish for the college and university crowd. From the daily emails one would receive from their friends, to chatting on MSN with peers, there seemed to be a shift in how frequently these were used. Facebook allows for the combination of both email and MSN, creating the next advancement in online communication. Posting photos regularly and sending private messages on Facebook, replaced much of the functions of Email. People could more thoroughly communicate and keep track of their friends and events.
Looking back to when events were sent online via Email, Facebook has introduced a way to create events that can be sent to hundreds of individuals at once. Through the easy layout of creating such events in Facebook, the detailed time consuming invite of an Email is no longer used. We live in a society of fast paced information and look for the simplest route to get what we want and produce the results we want. If I need to get a hold of a friend or simply send a document, Facebook allows this in a much more efficient and less time consuming manor.
As for MSN, which allowed for instant conversations through private messaging, the addition of 'Facebook chat' seems to have replaced this. It is as if we have our email, blog and MSN all in one online tool. Seeing as an individual can simply Facebook Chat instead of logging on to find out who is online, makes it easy to use and multitask with other activities.
Is this notion of Facebook truly taking over the roles of MSN and Email? Is our society, which is based on immediacy the reason for these constant changes among online communication? Will Email and MSN cease to exist in some near future?
When the most popular Internet communication site Facebook was created, this need for emailing on a daily basis seemed to diminish for the college and university crowd. From the daily emails one would receive from their friends, to chatting on MSN with peers, there seemed to be a shift in how frequently these were used. Facebook allows for the combination of both email and MSN, creating the next advancement in online communication. Posting photos regularly and sending private messages on Facebook, replaced much of the functions of Email. People could more thoroughly communicate and keep track of their friends and events.
Looking back to when events were sent online via Email, Facebook has introduced a way to create events that can be sent to hundreds of individuals at once. Through the easy layout of creating such events in Facebook, the detailed time consuming invite of an Email is no longer used. We live in a society of fast paced information and look for the simplest route to get what we want and produce the results we want. If I need to get a hold of a friend or simply send a document, Facebook allows this in a much more efficient and less time consuming manor.
As for MSN, which allowed for instant conversations through private messaging, the addition of 'Facebook chat' seems to have replaced this. It is as if we have our email, blog and MSN all in one online tool. Seeing as an individual can simply Facebook Chat instead of logging on to find out who is online, makes it easy to use and multitask with other activities.
Is this notion of Facebook truly taking over the roles of MSN and Email? Is our society, which is based on immediacy the reason for these constant changes among online communication? Will Email and MSN cease to exist in some near future?
