Fancy features: just because you can doesn't mean you should
In Having an IM conversation with a prospective date, I alluded to one of my (admittedly many) pet peeves: the "buzz" feature in Yahoo's IM client. This sparked a storm of agreement among my friends, who shared a variety of stories of other noisy features that people have used to try to get their attention, from a loud smooching sound to a big pair of lips that actually have a 20 second spiel leading up to a loud smooching sound. UGH.
And we've all gotten the overly cutesy email with lots of smilies and cartoonish hearts and flowers and who knows what all else.
To this I say: Just because the feature exists doesn't mean you have to use it. Think about how it might be received. If you're striking up an IM conversation with someone during the work day, they may have a coworker or boss looking over their shoulder at that moment. If you cause them embarrassment upon starting the conversation, I can assure you that things will not turn out well for you. Do the illustrations in your email add to it, or are they just propping up a weak approach?
Counterintuitively, it seems that the people who make the most use of these extra features of communication media are those who are least effective at actually communicating through them. In order to show off, in this case, less is often more.
