Jackie Danicki

Last week, while sorting out the logistics for lunch with Jeff Nolan, I wanted to send him my physical address. I was already in Gmail, so decided I’d shoot him a quick email. I searched Gmail high and low and finally realized that I don’t have Jeff’s email address. All of our communication since meeting at an event here in 2006 has been via blog comments, Twitter, and Twitter direct (private) messages.

The great thing about Twitter messages is that you’re limited to 140 characters. That forces brevity, and removes the guilt one often feels when sending a “just the facts” email. There are certain people in my life - Ben Casnocha, Chris Yeh…hmm, that’s it! - with whom being succinct will never be cause for offense. This is understood. With everyone else, a certain quota of pleasantries must be met, lest a to-the-point tone be mistaken for annoyance. Twitter’s built-in character limitation has been one of its most liberating features for me, and one of the reasons why it is now cannibalizing so much of the time I used to spend on email (another reason to love it).

(Of course, I don’t work in a typical corporate environment, which means I’m blessedly exempt from being included on those tiresome exercises in ass-covering, the Reply All responses. Still, the amount of PR emails I receive because of the beauty blog probably more than make up for that. I still spend too much time in email.)

I owe so many people email right now that I find myself wishing that, at the very least, my close friends would get on Twitter and start following me. Then they’d know what I’m up to, we could exchange those blessedly short direct messages, and email would be eliminated from the equation altogether.

A girl can dream…

Filed under: Life