In this clip, we'll talk about why do people use netiquette. Well, hopefully people do. Netiquette is a term that came from etiquette on the net, and I think the biggest faux pas about emailing and texting and all these wonderful new technologies we have is that, there's no human behavior that goes along with that, there's no subtext.

 

So, you may mean something one way and you write it out, and the meaning is completely misconstrued by the person on the other side. So, I think these emoticons have become popular, little smiley faces, and things like that. So that if you say something, that could maybe be taken in a different way, if you put that little smiley face it means, take that in a good way. And I think that it certainly helps to convey your message in a better way.

 

And netiquette is also about not passing on spam, if you're one of those people that sends out everything to everybody constantly, most people don't like that. You know, that's fun when you first get your computer but after you've been on it for a while, you’ve hopefully got a lot of more important things to do. So it's really about respecting other people's email address. If you send out a mass email, do it with blind copied addresses. Don't send out everybody's email to everybody else so that they can get spam by having their email address out there.

 

It's just about being considerate and really just replying in a fast manner, and not leaving it to, you know, not responding and not returning people's calls. So I think, netiquette really is something that should be more spoken about and more prominent because it's very important. It's just as if you were in a meeting, especially because email and all that is used so much in business nowadays, then it's really important to keep your business relationships professional and, you know, it's very casual with the email but you need to try to keep that netiquette up and be professional at all times.

 

This is Donna Barnes from New York City.