If you are a Facebook user, you may have noticed a recent, quiet change. When someone comments on one of your posts, links, or other content, you get an email, as you always have if you keep the default settings. Only now, you can reply to the comment simply by replying to the email.

This is an important change for Facebook, as it is an implicit acknowledgement that, while the Stream is an important place to share information, it is not the only place in which people want to share. Email remains, for just about everyone, the most indispensable communications tool. One of the pioneers of online civic engagement, Steven Clift, has long been almost a lone voice calling on organizations not to neglect their email strategy as they implement fancy social-networking strategies. He points out:

[N]ow that Facebook and Twitter have become so popular, they are now “streams” rather than reliable ways to reach the people who at one point said they wanted to “follow” you. People dip into the stream created by their friends and those they find interesting when they are thirsty
… often in their scarce idle time. They feel no obligation to drink from the end of the fire hose they have friended and followed.

He is absolutely right. This is the logical next step as people get used to “streams” as being a part of their digital life. In an earlier post, I’ve described a few of the nascent guidelines that people are beginning to follow when it comes to the Stream and the workplace:

• When you are sharing something, if it is interesting but not critical, add it to the Stream (by sharing on Facebook or Twitter, for instance).
• Don’t get upset if someone misses something you put in the Stream.
• Try to reserve emails to people’s Inboxes for things you really need them to see or act on.

Facebook’s move to make elements of their Stream more usable form within email are thus a very good idea.

While I do not necessarily want to see every last thing all my friends and others have posted into the Stream, I do want to see if people are interacting with what I have posted or adding comments after me. Those actions are worth seeing in my Inbox and I do want to be able to act on them from within it.

Our workplace (and other) norms are shifting as we get used to the ubiquitous Streams in our lives. For instance, it used to be assumed that you saw all of your friends’ status updates. Now, as people have more friends and as the Facebook newsfeed has gotten a little more selective in what it shows, people have begun to call attention to the shared items they think are noteworthy. By the same token, more people are sharing ephemeral trivia in the Stream rather than clogging people’s Inboxes.

I wonder, in five years and some of these norms have established and settled, what they will be. I am also curious to see how pervasive the new norms will be — will Aunt Edna begin to use the Stream for LOLcats?

Only time will tell.