Boris-

Very well illustrated! Too bad faxing didn't make the top 10 list! What about greeting cards? :-)

Or sex? Isn't that a very important way of communicating? Not that I'm communicating a lot like that...

I miss a few items, for instance regular chat (MSN, etc). Also, the available means differ per country. For example, in the Netherlands Hyves (yep, I know, it's a very weird name) is much bigger than Facebook, at least for now. Other than that I find this a great article, like the illustrations!

A handwritten greeting card is more personable in my opinion than a text message, and I still use them frequently. I am not so keen on using the telephone, for the same reason you mention. On the other hand... 'it's not what you say, it's how you say it'. Therefore I view using the telephone as preferable to e-mail. E-mail has a tendency of being mis-interpreted. Which is probably why people use smileys so often.

Great info...
Hard to say what I prefer, since it's contextual. I use IM far more than anything else.

Nice graphic, though I don't fully agree with your hierarchy.

These days, don't letters increasingly signify formal communication, not intimacy? Letters I send to and receive from friends and family are almost always emails, not on paper. And DMing or @replying via Twitter has replaced IM and text messaging to a substantial degree.

Incidentally:

They say that 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues.

This 'statistic' has been largely discredited: google 'Mehrabian myth' for more.

Heh ... the hierarchy, not yours ;) Sorry!