I just finished watching my weekly digest of "This Week in Venture Capital" (which is an outstanding show by the way, reach them @TWiVC) and at the end Mark Suster (the guest VC) was letting viewers know how to contact him and said something really great:
"Twitter is msuster, m-s-u-s-t-e-r, I respond to most of those. You can write to me on my blog: bothsidesofthetable(.com). And those are probably the best two channels, because e-mail is always a cluster-f."
It got me thinking about what makes @replies so much more manageable than e-mail. Yes, Twitter is much more casual, and its a one-way connection so you don't feel obliged to respond to everything (btw, I'm very impressed that Mark responds to most, I'll be testing that out...). But after deep, deep analysis and critical thinking, I have decided that there is one simple structural component of e-mail that adds that unnecessary layer of stress to it. The greeting.
The obligatory "Hi Mr. Mister" at the beginning and "Sincerely, Me" signature at the end really change my emotional reaction to e-mail. I mean it's not like I don't spell check my Tweets or anything or start devolving my speech just because it's Twitter. Regardless of the platform, I still like to say logical things. I realized that on the rare email that goes back and forth 12 times and has reached the point where greetings are no longer required because they would just interfere with the flow of the conversation, responding is MUCH easier. And only on Twitter can I talk to someone like Mark Suster and not say "Hi Mark, My name is Brian Pham and I blah blah blah." Instead, we're allowed to get straight to the conversation. And in those long email chains, we stop wasting time with greetings and get straight to the conversation. It really does take a lot of the friction out of communicating. Even Steve Jobs
employs the greetingless e-mail.
Also, as a loyal viewer I must do my duty and say: Remember to check out This Week in Venture Capital at
http://thisweekin.com/thisweekin-venture-capital/. It's only been on for two shows, but it's developing really well. Also, I'm not sure if Mark is going to be a regular, but he comes p-r-e-p-a-r-e-d. I think it's a great way to fill your senses with VC and reinforce the reading from blogs, TechCrunch etc. It's like how in school they would say if you want to memorize something you should consume the information in multiple forms (reading it, hearing it, and seeing it). I also love that I get to download the episode to watch later or load on other devices. I put it on right after Modern Family for a pretty sweet Wednesday night!
OH and if anyone was wondering, near the beginning of writing this post I sent Mark a message on Twitter and just as I'm wrapping it up he replied back!
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