

Response time to email reveals your close friends - tilt
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/11/e-mail-reveals-your-closest-frie.html

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freshhawk
Note to other commenters: No one gives a shit that you are an exception. It
not surprising that there are outliers or that HN has a lot of them. You
either don't understand the non-value of your anecdotal evidence or you are a
narcissist who thinks we care about how you talk to your friends.

I expected that most people would be talking about how weird it was that the
first application considered was to give a small advantage to niche marketing.

I had always thought the idea of a panopticon society was troubling but if
you're telling me that I'll get better targeted spam because marketers will
know who my friends are then I'm sold!

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hrktb
What other trivial commercial use would there be ? On an other topic there are
diseases like food alergies that can only be cured by a specific diet. They
can be heavily handicaping but can't be cured by medecines, so don't get any
love from pharmatical companies and are ridiculously under-researched. Even
though more than 1% of a population can be subjected to this kind of deceases.

Why would it be weird or surprising that research in casual communication and
social behavior would be primarily targeted at marketing and sales ?

>you are a narcissist who thinks we care about how you talk to your friends.

I guess they would be right, commenting on a post centered on how people
respond to friends.

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kstenerud
Doesn't apply to me at all. Any emails I send to my closest friends rarely
ever receive a response, and vice versa. And the volume of email is far less
than 30 a month. More like 1-5. In fact, I have longer and much more timely
email exchanges with complete strangers than I do with my friends.

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aw3c2
I doubt that I am the sole exception. I take much more time to reply to
friends (probably) because I care about what I write. So for me, this would be
quite the opposite.

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X-Istence
This doesn't hold true for me at all. I take about the same amount of time to
get back to any email that comes in, 1 - 2 months :P

I like email, it allows me to respond when I am ready, but at the same time
friends, family, co-workers and bosses know that sending me a text or asking
me over IM is going to MUCH faster than waiting for me to respond to an email.

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AznHisoka
this is definitely true for me. i know a slow response might indicate a busy
life, and taking time to craft a response, but it hurts psychologically when
you don't receive a response until a week or so later... if at all.

people should consider the effect a slow response can elicit . It's not about
whether your reasons are valid or not, it's about emotional intelligence and
considering how others would feel (whether that feeling is warranted or not is
not the point)

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georgecmu
... as well as your bosses.

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runevault
Seems to me that it's at best informative if you know how fast they reply to a
lot of different people. They might reply faster to you FOR THEM which could
still be a long period of time compared to others. Using this blindly would be
silly in the extreme.

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madiator
Few years back I used to reply to email much faster than I do now. Now its
slower mostly because of having too much mail and procrastination. In any
case, I hope they look at normalized response time rather than actual response
time.

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cgag
People email their friends?

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middus
I just sent out an invitation for a Christmas-themed dinner to a bunch of
friends via email. What's wrong about it? Or surprising? How would you let 9
people know when they're expected to show up? Call each one individually just
to say next Friday 8 o'clock?

