While reviewing the chronology of Social Media (SM), it struck me that all of the products were asynchronous except for The Palace chat room. In the late 90s and early 2000s, chat rooms were a popular focus of recreational computer users, but today, it seems like live chat has become less popular, in favor of the asynchronous mechanisms. I think our preference for the not-live tools shows how the internet and computers are filling a gap in the real world, experienced mostly synchronously.

Like Marinathk wrote in the last paragraph, I think anonymity is a bigger influence on communication through technology than an identity. Assuming that anonymity is the lack of an identity, even if just online, the other aspects of communication - intention, context, what is stated, how it is received, have a larger impact on the communication than the speaker's identity.

I think this paragraph overgeneralizes the link between medium and message. The idea that the medium determines the message has been overturned, in my opinion, by the proliferation of options to use as medium, the ease of use across most products, and a trend toward similar features reproduced in technology that was intended to extend variety. In my experience, the level of formality in communication tends to be related to the speaker, not the medium they use to communicate.