Excessive posting? ... Interesting.....

[Tiki Tom]

I think even e-mail is slowly fading into the sunset.
These days I probably use WhatsApp or text messaging more. Of course, I’m retired now. Maybe e-mail is more of a workplace thing.
Don‘t ask me; I’m old and irrelevant.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

Holy Wow! Nice to see/hear that all is well (as expected and hoped for) as well hear from you. Your presence has been greatly missed. Too many have left the Lounge, but it is still a pretty nice place to visit When time allows.

I've noticed a lot of people that were part of the fabric here seem to be MIA. I pop in and read posts once in awhile, but just don't have a whole lot to contribute these days. Collecting vintage has come to a crawl with the other trappings of life taking a front seat to hobbies.

 

[LostInTyme]

It seems to be the same across the board. Many forums that I belong to, are now less busy than a few years ago. I too, use them less and less. Perhaps, it has something to do with the times we are all living and experiencing. Bigger things are afoot, and the climate has changed both on a World Basis, and within our own communities. I still like to have a place where I can go, for awhile, to get away from all the craziness. This is a nice refuge and pretty-much a safe haven.

 

[Edward]

I think even e-mail is slowly fading into the sunset.
These days I probably use WhatsApp or text messaging more. Of course, I’m retired now. Maybe e-mail is more of a workplace thing.
Don‘t ask me; I’m old and irrelevant.

As things sit currently, I think you're probably right. I know I've certainly fallen out of the practice of using email much at all outside of work. Within the office, there are younger members of staff trying to push the use of the direct messaging facility on Teams as an alternative to email now. I am now semi-deliberately cultivating a reputation for being hit and miss about responding to DMs; Teams is great as a phone replacement - I vastly prefer the video chats over phone calls, and I could have cried with joy when they got rid of our desk phones. I do, however, despise the idea of having yet another text communications service that I'm expected to check regularly...

I've backed down and am using Whatsapp for work, though that's under review given it has made me 'visible' elsewhere. Much prefer Signal to that, but hey ho.

With social media as we've come to understand it - Facebook, twitter and such - rapidly falling out of fashion with the under 40s, I think we may well see traditional email making a comeback. For hobbyists interested in any depth and accessibility, traditional forms will continue to matter: even FB groups are not a credible replacement for an architecture like this. Fine for quick info in a transitory way, but good luck ever finding it again after more that a few days.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

As things sit currently, I think you're probably right. I know I've certainly fallen out of the practice of using email much at all outside of work. Within the office, there are younger members of staff trying to push the use of the direct messaging facility on Teams as an alternative to email now. I am now semi-deliberately cultivating a reputation for being hit and miss about responding to DMs; Teams is great as a phone replacement - I vastly prefer the video chats over phone calls, and I could have cried with joy when they got rid of our desk phones. I do, however, despise the idea of having yet another text communications service that I'm expected to check regularly...

I've backed down and am using Whatsapp for work, though that's under review given it has made me 'visible' elsewhere. Much prefer Signal to that, but hey ho.

With social media as we've come to understand it - Facebook, twitter and such - rapidly falling out of fashion with the under 40s, I think we may well see traditional email making a comeback. For hobbyists interested in any depth and accessibility, traditional forms will continue to matter: even FB groups are not a credible replacement for an architecture like this. Fine for quick info in a transitory way, but good luck ever finding it again after more that a few days.

This is a change that I do not care for myself. I own a business and it's frustrating to me when I have employees and customers that try to reach me through Facebook messenger, texting, e-mail, messages through my invoicing system, my personal accounts, etc.

I feel a lot of time is wasted just trying to remember who contacted me from where.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

I've noticed a lot of people that were part of the fabric here seem to be MIA. I pop in and read posts once in awhile, but just don't have a whole lot to contribute these days. Collecting vintage has come to a crawl with the other trappings of life taking a front seat to hobbies.

I haven’t posted in this thread in a long time. There was a time when this was the FL “chat room”. I still post here though I tend to be on FB and now Reddit more.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I often read the name "Reddit", in the last years.

So my question is:
Should I know about it? Is it anyhow relevant? Or just another "fashion-trend"?

 

[Edward]

This is a change that I do not care for myself. I own a business and it's frustrating to me when I have employees and customers that try to reach me through Facebook messenger, texting, e-mail, messages through my invoicing system, my personal accounts, etc.

I feel a lot of time is wasted just trying to remember who contacted me from where.

Quite so. You end up either on all the socials or none of them. As the networks have themselves become news items in recent years, not always in a positive way, and the market has fragmented, it has become the case you either have to choose which is the best marketing tool, or to commit to an awful lot of time keeping up with them all. I've noticed a lot of businesses I've followed are increasingly ditching or at least markedly rolling back on their facebook presence in favour of Instagram. Quite a few have dropped Twitter altogether, though I don't know if they're on BlueSky (which seems to be the main place people move on from there); I've briefly dabbled with it, but like Twitter back around 2009 when I briefly tried that, I find the format too limited to produce anything of particular interest.

The EU Digital Markets Act (a companion piece to the Digital Safety Act, which seeks to put some level of regulation over unlawful and problematic information on social media) does have a provision in it which requires relevant services which offer direct messaging to ensure that this is cross-compatible with other such apps. Same as email is, really. I wonder if that might be the way forward. I currently also use both Signal (for family) and (very reluctantly, for work) Whatsapp. I would be very happy if those were cross-compatible, such that I could benefit from the much better, more private Signal while still communicating with those using Whatsapp. I see no reason why this wouldn't be technically possible, but obviously it's gonig to be hard to persuade the techbros to get on board as they're all about monopolisation given the profitability thereof. It'll be interesting to see how successful the EU is with this oging forward.

I often read the name "Reddit", in the last years.

So my question is:
Should I know about it? Is it anyhow relevant? Or just another "fashion-trend"?

It's like a sort of forum but very generic. There are lots of subreddits dedicated to different types of information, with their own moderators - some more tightly moderated than others. I've look in on it here and there when it comes up on a general web search, but never signed up. Ultimately, I don't like the interface. t feels too primitive, and there's a lot of toing and froing where you can read so many replies to each post before the 'see more' link takes you to another page, then you have to loop back to get to the other answers in the thread. I believe it also doesn't present you everything in chronological order - at some point, as I understand it it does a Facebook style 'Most Relevant' approach putting some answers to the top ahead of others, which I can't be doing with. One of many reasons I'm radically reducing my use of Facebook in the hope something similar-but-better comes along in due course is its increasing micromanagement of the information I get to see. I originally signed up to use it as a source of information I wanted - now it's not only filling my feed with well over half of it being stuff I've not selected as things I want to see, but even when I get a post I want to see it presumes to decide which responses to it are ones I might find "most relevant".

I dabbled with Quora for a bit. It's quite good for in-depth discussions, but I deleted it when it became too much of a timesuck. Also, like Reddit and other open forums you can't really lock down anything with any sort of privacy, so it's very 'public'. In the end I went scorched earth with it and deleted my account. I've not been inclined to go back since.