I recently noticed that the older you get, the less enthusiastic you are when you get mail, phone calls, and even email. I think this stems from the fact that when you were a kid, any personalized communication really comes from your friends who want nothing else other than to hang out, see what you are doing, or stay in touch.  

As you get older, more and more of your primary means of communication get filled with commercialized intent: mail fills with bills; phones get cold calls; and email gets spam. Getting older fortunately seems to coincides with growing up with new technologies and new means of communications. Texting quickly becomes the remaining medium that you get excited to check until you start getting unsolicited SMS spam. BBM then becomes the only way to ensure high signal to noise ratios (an angle that Blackberry is only now becoming to promote). It is a never ending war for privacy and intimacy of communication which balances the tension of reachability and anonymity.

MySpace may have been a place for friends but that changed over time. Facebook has this challenge and does its utmost best to fight spam and complete commercialization of what is basically a channel of communication. The private social network, Path, has great potential in becoming the new filter for communication between true friends. Someone using one of these new means of communicating will always have a better chance of getting my attention because I will check it more often and with more enthusiasm.

The new medium is the personal message at least as far as communications goes.