Escape From Message Hell-Nir&Far

Hi, I'm Nir Eyal and this is the near and Far Podcast. This podcast is about business, behavior and the brain. On this show I do a few things. I read quick articles I've written about topics shaping your behavior. I interview authors of books I enjoy, and from time to time I devote episodes to answering your questions. If you want to ask me a question, visit the podcast page on itunes, go to Ratings and Reviews, and ask me a question. By leaving a review, I promise to read it and possibly include your question in a future episode. So please ask me anything now. Enjoy the episode and for more, you can always Visit me@nearandfar.com.

Escape from Message Hell by nearandfar.com written by Nir Ehal we are caught in an endless cycle of messaging hell, and the pattern is always the same. First, a new communication system is born. Take email or Facebook, for example. Ease of use helps the product gain wide adoption and reach a critical mass of users. And then things turn ugly. Some crafty entrepreneur figures out how to exploit the system and starts building a business around it. He reaches millions of people and opens the floodgates to countless others who seek to emulate his methods. Inevitably, the messaging channel is deluged with crap, clogging the pipes of what was once an efficient mode of communication. Again, email or Facebook.

Notification Noise the latest messaging onslaught is hitting the notification systems on our smartphones. Those little red badges hovering over our app icons and urgent graphics along the top of our screens incessantly remind us of some task that needs doing. They crowd out real priorities with bits of tiny triviality. Notification spam has many up in arms, but the flood of distractions continues. This is the story repeated ever since telemarketers started ruining dinners across the land. It was not until federal regulation effectively put them out of business with the Do Not Call Registry did they stop their pestering. To date, platforms have been responsible for policing spammers on Facebook, Twitter, Android, or Apple's iOS. But keeping exploiters out is only half the challenge. The real problem is keeping the channels useful as they grow.

Exhibit A Google search for I hate email returns 586 million results, more than twice the results for the Beatles. Very scientific, I know, but you get the point. The irony is that the more efficient the communication channel is, the more overcrowded it becomes. No one seems to like email, and dozens, perhaps hundreds, of startups have tried to fix it. And yet no one has. Email is just too easy, and the easier something is to do, the more people do it. As a result, even Companies that want to deliver valuable content must fight in vain for attention between emails from Nigerian heiresses and offers for cheap pharmaceuticals. What works There is a hierarchy for the kinds of messages we respond to. If you're a company trying to get noticed, it is useful to know what gets people's attention. First, we respond to messages from our past selves. A calendar reminder set the day before is likely to be acted upon. An emailed to do from oneself is rarely ignored. Technology that can time shift the delivery of information to when the user needs it most has massive potential. Next time I'm shopping, tell me my body measurements. When I'm in the vicinity of doing a task like dropping off that package at ups, let me know there's a store nearby. When I'm about to meet a friend for lunch, remind me they bought last time so I can make sure to pick up the tab. What Robert Scoble calls contextual computing and Om Malik calls predictive computing will have the power to cut through the clutter as long as the messaging feels as though it was sent from the user to the user. Next on the hierarchy, we respond to messages from close contacts. The need for social cohesion is a key motivator of our everyday lives, and we act upon authentic prompts from the people most important to us. The current messaging morass is in large part due to our obligation to respond to everything sent to us from people we know, even if the reply is the banal but obligatory thanks or ttyl rise and fall of the machines. Finally, the least effective method is messages from machines, the lowest use of technology enabled communication. A call to action from a pre filled autoresponder has the smallest chance of getting our attention because people learn to sniff out and avoid inauthenticity. Marketing messages using various persuasion techniques come and go in a constant game of cat and mouse. Users learn quickly what's real and what's fake, and they become more annoyed the more often they associate a company with a message they didn't ask for. Pasting a friend's name or face on a message may be effective for a while, but when users figure out what's going on, they move on. Eventually, messages are deleted without being opened, lists get unsubscribed from, and apps are uninstalled. Cluttered communication channels, whether real world post office boxes full of junk mail or their digital equivalents, contribute to our collective frustration. In order to save apps from themselves and users from daily annoyances, companies must find ways to send useful notifications or not to send them at all but companies now have an opportunity to provide the ultimate authentic messaging, namely information we choose to send ourselves. By shifting the delivery of the message to the most appropriate time and place where it is most likely to be acted upon, new technologies will become indispensable solutions we can't imagine living without.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the near and Far Podcast. You can always find more at my blog, nearandfar.com and don't forget, if you have a question you'd like me to explore in a future episode, leave me your question. The former review for the podcast on itunes.