Читать книгу FLEX - Rick Grimaldi - Страница 15

First there was America Online or AOL (Are you old enough to remember the sound of the modem connecting when you logged on?), which seeded our universal addiction to internet connectivity with the beginning of Yahoo's online chat forums and early email.

This was followed in the early 2000s by a bevy of websites ratcheting up our connectivity and taking social media from a nerdy techno-babbling hobby into mainstream daily communication for most of us. There was Friendster (for making friends, obviously), Classmates.com (for alumni), LinkedIn (for work contacts), and Myspace, the social precursor to Facebook.

Today, Facebook, which was originally concepted for networking among college students. has grown into a prolific and widely used social media network with 1.3 billion active users since it debuted in 2006. Then, of course, there is also Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Vine, and Google+ with their own unique value propositions for users. TikTok, a video-sharing network, has also recently joined the ranks.

This has all resulted in a barrage of emoji use by all. Cute icons that are angry, teary, anxious, and laughing are everywhere in our communications today.

What you may not be aware of, though, is that how we communicate—and whether we are comfortable with this type of common shorthand at work—determines the degree to which we remain relevant and valued at work.