The Death and/or Evolution of Language
- I graduated college with a Business and English dual concentration.
- My mother is a Reading Specialist and English teacher.
- My brother is a journalist and editor for various online and print media.
- I’ve been told that I sound like a news reporter because I enunciate and speak clearly.
I like to think that my grammar is above average, and I get frustrated when simple errors are consistently made (Your vs Your; Their vs There; Me vs I; the list goes on…).
However, in a world where 140 characters is the maximum space within which to communicate, where acronyms run rampant in the C-suite, and texting has created a new alphabet, does this inevitably mean that above average communication skills will hold less weight over time? Are proper grammar and spelling things of the past?
I hate to admit it, but I’ve been a culprit of shortening my language to squeeze within Twitter’s 140 limit (I’m used to writing 10+ page English essays on Victorian Literature… give me a break!). Instead of writing a sentence that feels right to me, I have to abbreviate, cut, and edit my original thought to fit the digital medium.
In the future, will this new digital language be the basis of proper communication? Will we lose our ability to reflect and describe our best selves in writing now that we’re so wrapped up in the speed with which we communicate?
Is this even a bad thing…?
What do you think?
(Check out Clayton Crockett’s opinion here.)
Broadcast IT
Navigating Twitter with both personal and professional objectives in mind can be challenging – what voice do you use? What content do you repost? Who do you follow? However, these questions also make this platform such a useful tool for current job hunters. By electronically broadcasting your voice, future employers can get a sense of who you are, what you’re interested in, what news you choose to follow or participate within.
So, for those users who don’t quite know how to approaching using Twitter on a daily basis, ask yourself what conversation you want to be a part of? If it’s about your company or the industry you work in – broadcast it. If it’s a new venue in the city you live in – broadcast it. If it’s interesting to you, then chances are it’s going to positively represent you in a digital forum.
To get a sense of how you use Twitter – and as a special #FF post – I’m curious as to who you follow on Twitter. Do you use Twitter for personal use only? For professional use only? A combination of the two?
Here are my top picks:
LOCAL
NATIONAL
INDIVIDUALS
(As a final shout out, I just started following @MariSmith who posted this appropriate article today: Why You Should Be Using Twitter and 7 Random Benefits – by Basil Puglisi)
Mobile Future
Did you see Facebook’s new standalone mobile app for its Messenger feature pop up in your app store this week?
Regardless of whether or not you plan on using that feature instead of the robust (and burdensome) Facebook app, you should know that this marks a very important shift in the way Facebook is thinking about mobile.
The future of web service is Mobile.
First of all – Mobile is important. Not only is this where the growth is (see: Foursquare and Instagram), many sites (like Twitter) have figured out how to monetize their apps profitably. Mobile is not just about games and news though. It’s about user-experience, social sharing, and creating light and dedicated features to break up the weight and feature-heavy web applications currently in existence. And Facebook Messenger is the response to this “application-lite” trend.
As Fred Wilson – blogger, VC, and Principal of Union Square Ventures – writes on his blog, A VC: Musings of a VC in NYC -
Mobile does not reward feature richness. It rewards small, application specific, feature light services. I have said this before but I will say it again. The phone is the equivalent of the web application and the mobile apps you have on your home screen(s) are the features.
The mobile future means that the rules of advertising, commerce, and app development are changing. How will your company respond to this movement?
Check out some Philly-based companies that are changing the landscape of Mobile:
- Philly.com: A bubbling of tech firms in Philadelphia’s Old City, Jane M. Von Bergen
Jessica Samph
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