Pay careful attention to the response from Backblaze:
> "Hi Brett! The pixels we use are primarily for audience building when we advertise on other platforms like Facebook for example." [...]
The carefully calculated cutesy "Hi Brett!" with the exclamation point is the same reason big tech companies use infantile graphics [0]: by seeming playful, they create the illusion they are a Safe Friend you can Trust.
Using a salutation, and addressing someone by name is not a conspiracy to make people trust you. The things that you should care about are the banality of evil, and that no one believes that they've done anything wrong. I live in the Midwest and my job is to make low-impact CRUD applications for a small car insurance company. I would use the same salutation, because I have been taught that that is what I'm supposed to do. I wasn't coached in some session on how to trick people into thinking I'm their buddy - it just becomes part of the shared social vocabulary.
Modern business vocabulary has shifted from "Dear Mr. LastName," to "Hi FirstName!". This shift happened first in more "trendy" places, although most everyone has already moved on to using informal language in customer relations.
I do agree with your point about banality of evil.
Ha - you’re right. I suppose I object to "Hi $FirstName!" becoming the standard in professional communication. Often there’s nothing exciting that follows that exclamation mark, and the comma has been the standard so far.
Backblaze is role-playing 'trusted friend' on twitter the same way McDonalds and Wendys get into 'fights' on twitter. It's just corporate playbook stuff; I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy. Here's the latest posts on backblaze's twitter: https://i.imgur.com/mMkylym.png
I believe that your analysis has flaws. It would be quite awkward on social media to use the a more formal way of addressing people. Twitter and other platforms have a "style" of conversation and trying to fit the square peg of formal writing into the round hole of internet conversation sounds stilted. I do not understand why you think corporations would decide to do that, no matter what their intentions are.
I humbly await your response.
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Mr. rPlayer
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I don't use twitter so I don't know what the etiquette over there but outside of emails I wouldn't normally expect any salutation in an internet message.
So for me it's not so much that the salutation not formal enough, it's more that it's odd that it exists at all.
But then again maybe usages differ in twitterworld.
> "Hi Brett! The pixels we use are primarily for audience building when we advertise on other platforms like Facebook for example." [...]
The carefully calculated cutesy "Hi Brett!" with the exclamation point is the same reason big tech companies use infantile graphics [0]: by seeming playful, they create the illusion they are a Safe Friend you can Trust.
[0] http://jollo.org/LNT/public/nursery.html