Calendarfly

Remember when you used to invite friends to parties by calling them or handwriting a bunch of invitations?

Then remember how cool it was when you used email to organize people for the first time? No more working the phone lines, no more scribbling the same note again and again. Now you'd just type up one email (funny and glib, of course). The only hard part would be tracking down your friends' email addresses. RSVPing was as simple as hitting reply (please: not "reply all!"). You'd keep a list of yay's and nay's—or, if you used Evite, you didn't even have to track the replies—and then voila: It's party time!

When you started using Facebook, this changed all over again. Now you didn't even have to dig for people's email addresses. You didn't have to sort through all the different message threads. Nowadays organizing people is as easy as updating your status.

By now we all know how the internet has changed the way we connect with one another. At this point, the real question is how the new internet—what lots of people call "Web 2.0," where readers are publishers and online social networking sites are the most popular on the web—has changed the whole dynamic once again.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal considers this question. In turns out we're all using email a lot less than we used to. Instead, now we turn to Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and other real-time messaging services to make plans and tell the world what we're up to.

In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

Why? Because email, believe it or not, has become old-fashioned.

[E]mail was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet—logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone… Years ago, we were frustrated if it took a few days for a letter to arrive. A couple of years ago, we'd complain about a half-hour delay in getting an email. Today, we gripe about it taking an extra few seconds for a text message to go through.

CalendarFly is part of the new web described in the Journal. Like Facebook, your calendar is updated in real time. All the information you need is pulled together for you. But instead of updates on what some casual acquaintance ate for dinner last night, CalendarFly aggregates information that really matters. We know how important parents talking with teachers is for their kids' success. Teachers and principals need to keep parents updated not just about report cards and upcoming conferences, but also the everyday stuff—homework assignments, class projects, tests, game schedules, etc.

The old systems schools used to get messages to parents—phone trees, sending notes home with kids, photocopied letters—are as outmoded as the old ways we used to invite friends to parties before email. But as this Journal article suggests, we've moved passed email as well. You shouldn't have to wait for messages from all your kids' teachers and coaches. And you shouldn't have to assemble all the information yourself. Our goal is to make school-family communication as quick and easy as a Facebook update.

--Matt