I don’t know why, but I’ve never liked picking up my voicemails. My entire communications system revolves around my email, so I’ve never understood why voicemails don’t show up in my email box.

A number of providers can do this for you — it’s likely that your phone company offers this kind of service, where people leave a voicemail and the audio is emailed to you.

I use a great service called PhoneTag that goes one stage beyond that — it actually transcribes the message for you. You forward any calls you miss from your office or cell phone to the special number PhoneTag gives you. To the caller, it sounds like any normal voicemail, complete with your voice prompting callers to leave a message. When they do so, a human being somewhere transcribes their message and that text is sent, along with an MP3 of the actual voicemail, to your regular email box.

Google Voice and others offer something similar, but their systems rely on a computer program to try to decrypt what someone is saying. As such, it doesn’t know when a comma or period goes, can’t figure out when someone is spelling out a name, and so on. The people at PhoneTag are usually very good at trying to accurately transcribe the message. They’ll even put [?] after guesses if it’s not clear. If you’d like someone else to take a whack at transcribing the voicemail, just hit Reply and Send.

I’ve found voicemails come to me transcribed less than five minutes after they were left. I never, ever actually “dial in” to pick up my messages.

The other advantage to this is that because it arrives in your email box, you can store the message and audio forever. Search your email for someone’s name and you’ll get their emails and voicemails sent to you. It will even put their actual name in the From line of the email if you upload your address book to the system.

PhoneTag comes with unlimited voicemail box storage, you can still dial-in and pick up messages if you like, and 24/7 customer support. You can pay in any of three ways:

• $0.35 per message

• $9.95 per month for up to 40 messages a month ($0.25 for each message over 40)
• $29.95 for unlimited messages

Whether you are in a meeting, showing off a home with a client, or on the golf course, you can instantly see who called, what they said, and you won’t have to listen to all of your messages to find out about an important missed call. I often hit Forward and reply via email to the person who left the voicemail. They’re often pretty amused to see their words in text form.

As you probably know, you can only tell if someone has opened your email if they are using HTML email and have images enabled. (Each email is sent with a uniquely identifying tiny, transparent image. But if images are disabled on the receipient’s side, you won’t be able to tell if someone opened the email.)

So, you need to convince people to turn on images. Of course you could always ASK them to, but you’ve not offering any real incentive to do that.

That’s where the ALT tag comes in.

Create an image and put in its ALT tag something like “To tell if you won the contest, turn on images!” or “Turn on images to see this photo of our CEO drunk at our last Christmas party.” (Okay, maybe not that last one.) Your “sell” has to be something that your email target would really want to see, and something that you can deliver only in text, like the URL of a special web site that only your subscribers would get access to.

That way, they’ll only see the information if they turn on images. And up go your visible open rates!

UPDATE: November 12, 2009
Has the Twitter brand death-spiral begun? ComScore today released numbers showing that visits to Twitter.com declined eight per cent. Why visit Twitter.com when its API lets anyone access tweets from anywhere? Has the death spiral begun?

———

Perhaps the most difficult part of forecasting technologies’ pace is discerning which technologies will be short-lived fads and which will become ingrained in our lives. Often, millions of dollars are at stake — should the I.T. department hold steady or invest in a promising solution that may indeed become the next Pointcast. It’s not an easy game and for that reason many technology commentators steer clear of any kind of forecasting.

But despite the infrequent unpredictable breakout hit, technology’s growth curve is actually quite predictable. (The oft-misquoted Moore’s Law is probably the most well-known reliable long-term trend in computer hardware.¹ )

There is indeed a tipping point in technology timelines — the moment when a fad evolves into being a secure part of our lives — and it is the point at which a technology becomes invisible. Not literally invisible, of course, but practically invisible in our day-to-day lives.

The Thermostat Test

Think about your home thermostat. When you actually stop to consider what it does — measure the room temperature and automatically adjust the heating/cooling automatically — it’s actually quite an amazing technology that’s had a large impact on our standard of living.

One can imagine the attention the invention received when it was first in use in the late 1800s. Today, though, it’s pretty much invisible in our lives. Sure, you can see it, but when was the last time you actually thought about your thermostat? Nobody has come to your place and stopped to remark about “that awesome thermostat” of yours. It’s simply slipped into the wider growing conscious of the technology around us.

This, then, is the litmus test for tech fads and technology’s influence in our lives. When a technology blends effortlessly into our daily living and becomes essentially invisible to us, it secures a permanent place in our environment.

And this is how Twitter will die.

I’m not suggesting, of course, that we’ll be without the ability to tweet any more, just that the mechanism by which we do so will become so ingrained in our lives that we may not even know it as “Twitter” in the future.

Consider the ways Twitter has evolved beyond being a hyped-up web site:

• Facebook completely redesigned its site to become more “Twitter-like” (much to the chagrin of its user base)
• Hundreds of thousands of Twitter users interact with their Twitter followers only though mobile-phone text messaging
• Dozens of mobile applications exist on nearly every cell phone to provide direct access to Twitter’s functionality
• Long-term Twitter API holdout LinkedIn has caved into member pressure and, as of today, now provides a way of tweeting directly from its site

As more developers take advantage of Twitter’s API, the need for anyone to go to Twitter’s actual web site lessens. Now, we access through phones, airport and mall kiosks, and even toilets. A small industry is developing around linking ‘real life’ to Twitter. An inexpensive do-it-yourself kit hooks everyday appliances to Twitter so they can tweet about their daily energy consumption. And, in what screenwriters would call a beautiful “envelope ending,” modified thermostats can now tweet their average temperature points.

The Looming Death of the Twitter Brand

Contrary to the opinions of most tech pundits, in the coming years I expect the Twitter brand will decline in mindshare. Consider that most venture capital money is historically speculative and short-term in nature; V.C.s quickly grow tired of funding rounds devoted to building mass brand awareness, a very expensive strategy. This is partly why many buzz-attracting tech brands of the past today operate happily in the background, quietly earning consistent returns without the brand front-and-centre.

In fact, this trend toward invisibility is already happening to Twitter — newscasters tell viewers to “send a tweet” today, not “Go to twitter.com and send a message” as they used to. The act of tweeting will stay with us now, even if the brand fails.

As Twitter becomes less a web site and more simply a platform for short messages, the more its brand will recede from our mind. If history is any guide, this will be the point at which Twitter, as we know it today, will disappear. Its feeder parts, like cell phone apps and social networking sites, will then devour its functionality, pushing its growth into the stratosphere, making it immortal.

Twitter will die. And, in so doing, will live forever.

1. Moore’s Law, which has proven very accurate, supposed that the number of transistors that could be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit will double about every two years. It is frequently misquoted as suggesting that the price of technology will halve and the processing speed will double every two years.

In researching and preparing for my keynote presentation Leading the Facebook Generation:
How to Manage, Inspire, and Retain the Generation-Y Millennials, I’ve come across so many horrible myths about Generation Y in the workplace.

The three most common myths:

• “Generation Y employees will quit their job just to go snowboarding.” (More likely, they were being ignored or treated like a cog at work.)
• “Generation Y workers are used to having everything handed to them on a silver platter.” (Quite to the contrary, this generation’s work ethic is very strong, provided there’s just a little bit of recognition for a job well done.)
• “Everyone in Gen-Y are experts in technology.” (Not true. Many more than you’d think don’t have Facebook accounts, only use email that much, and couldn’t care less about anything Steve Jobs talks about.)

But one thing the pundits mostly have right is this:

Generation Y employees want to change the world.

They want their time working for an employer to be much more than helping to pay “the man’s” mortgage, or that of some shareholders. And by “world,” it could be that they want to change their community, or they want to change how the office runs, or they want to volunteer for a company-supported charity. But they want to have some direct impact.

Employees today no longer are happy with just getting a paycheque in exchange for their time. They want something to contribute to something that aligns with their personal values. And those values have changed over the decades.

1970s: Stability

Back in the 1970s, office workerbeers focused their work ethic toward achieving simple stability. Who could blame them? Times were uncertain: It was the age of Kent State, Nixon’s resignation, the fall of Saigon, and uprest in Iran. Financially, things looked gloomy — interest rates were pushing past 18 per cent.

Back then, the average office worker was happy to have a job, stay there for their entire career, and take the gold watch as they entered retirement. What these people sought was predictability, stability, and “staying the course.” Survival and prosperity of the company was paramount and individual goals were put at rest.

1980s: Money

Perhaps as a response to the measured, conservative work ethic of the previous decade, the 1980s saw a radical reversal of this spirit. Suddenly, people put the focus on themselves and their personal prosperity, often at the expense of the collective.

The primary concern for workers in the 1980s was themselves — it sometimes was even referred to as “The Me Decade.” Stability be damned; this was the era of high risk and the promise of high profits. Books with titles like “Make millions without lifting a finger” came out of the woodwork (and still, sadly, do today).

The media were rife with stories about the personal entrepreneur striking gold. For the first time, quirky, egotistical business executives became celebrities in their own rights (DeLorean, Steve Jobs, etc.). Pop culture became fascinated with themes of personal wealth, gluttony, and prosperity (Dynasty, Trading Millions, Ferris Beuller’s Day Off). Think about The Cosby Show — arguably, the most popular show in the 1980s — which starred a character who had a beautiful home, a perfect family, and never seemed to go to work!

Mid-1990s: “Balance”

Then came the Gen-X decade (commonly called “slackers” by the media) who demanded balance. Workers, especially in startup companies and technology firms, began pushing back against the long hours they exchanged for the promise of future profits.

“Balance” was a moving target. Technology and video-game executives heard “recreation” and created on-campus volleyball courts. They heard “family” so they started in-building daycares. All of which, of course, sent the message that workers should stay at work, rather than go home and enjoy the fruits of their labour.¹

Today: The Search for Meaning

Generation Y workers, though, don’t feel the need to work mindless hours in the pursuit of personal fortune. They want to work long enough to enjoy life and use their time for something bigger.

• Today’s young realtors want to know how that young family that they sold a home to is doing.
• Today’s young financial planners may very well pick up the phone to see how their client is doing — just because they genuinely care.

In a recent study of 4,700 people, more people said “fulfilling work” was the most important factor to staying with an employer — well ahead of job security (70s) and personal advancement (80s).

So as a result, if you expect to recruit and retain these people, your organization must articulate meaning — the actual difference that their time will make in their community, in the world, in the country, within their family, on their block.

1. I fell victim to this flawed executive thinking as well, In the late 90s, I was co-founder and CEO of a successful publicly traded artificial intelligence firm. Most of our staff were highly skilled programmers — the kind of “microserfs” Douglas Coupland wrote about. They worked hard, played hard, and were top of their game; many drew a higher salary than me and other senior executives. When they asked for balance, I created an aromatherapy room. Honest to God. We had this unused area that was meant as a photocopy nook so we put a door on it, painted the room black, put glow-in-the-dark sticky stars and planets all over the wall, brought in comfy chairs, and hid an aromatherapy diffuser in the corner. “Relax?” it told our employees, “Feel free. Just please don’t leave the office.”