# data[].attributes.body
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/technology-communicate-27322.html

# data[].attributes.body
http://www.skillsyouneed.com/general/what-is-communication.html

# data[].attributes.body
Instagram
Calls
Facetime
Snapchat

# data[].attributes.body
Snapchat
Face to Face
Music
9gag

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
6,234 points * 128 comments - These legs are worth millions! - 9GAG has the best funny pics, gifs, videos, gaming, anime, manga, movie, tv, cosplay, sport, food, memes, cute, fail, wtf photos on the internet!

# data[].attributes.body
- Codes
- Speaking to each other
- Telephone
- Sign language
- Music
- Skype
- Tinder
- Pictures
- Videos
- Movies
- Sounds
- Touch

# data[].attributes.body
Body language (eyes)
Facetime
Skype
Snapchat
Twitter
Facebook
Hi5
tumblr
Vsco
Blogs
Music.ly

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
9GAG is your best source of FUN! Explore 9GAG for the most popular memes, breaking stories, awesome GIFs, and viral videos on the internet!

# data[].attributes.body
E-mail
Whats app
Facebook
Youtube
Letters
Books
Words
Emoji
Snapchat
Music
Talking
Blogs
Ted talks
TV
Kik

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Cultural Studies

There was a period last summer when my 25-year-old sister, Willa, decided to start communicating with me through comments on the rapper Drake's Instagram feed.

Sometimes it would just be to say hi; other times to inform me of her plans for the weekend, or to relay an amusing anecdote. Once or twice, we carried on full back-and-forth conversations. I didn't think much of it at the time. Sure, it seemed a little strange that she wouldn't just text me, but I figured it was just some Millennial Thing I didn't understand.

And then I started to notice that my sister wasn't the only one using nonstandard methods to get in touch.

One friend would only communicate by Yo (which basically just lets you "poke" each other back and forth with one word: Yo). My mom uses FaceTime; my co-workers, Slack; my paranoid German friend, Paul, something called Telegram (which I'm told also happens to be the preferred communication method of ISIS, because it's encrypted).

In all, on my phone right now, I have at least a dozen apps that allow me to get in touch with people. There's standard text messaging; video messaging apps like Snapchat and FaceTime; work-related channels (Outlook, LinkedIn); dating apps (Tinder, OKCupid); and social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) - and that's before you get into the niche and even absurd, like GroupMe (messaging for groups) and Venmo (which is for paying people, but requires you to add a message with your payment). And, of course, there are dozens (hundreds!) more that I don't use at all.

It's mind-numbing and baffling to think about, and the strangest part of it is that most of the time I don't even notice I'm communicating in so many different places. There have even been times when I've caught myself messaging the same person through multiple channels.

"Each one serves its own unique purpose," my 26-year-old co-worker Amanda Weatherhead said. "You call when you have a long story and you want to catch up with someone. Snapchat is for something short you only want to share once. Facebook and Instagram are for sharing funny things with your friends. WhatsApp is for people out of the country. Slack is for work."

Seems simple enough, but for Anna Dworetzky, who's 15, there's a very specific age component involved.

"Snapchat and Yik Yak and Twitter - that's all younger people," she said. "But when I talk to parents or family friends, they're focused on Facebook. My friends don't really use it; my mom's friends - that's all they use."

Snapchat is one of the most popular apps out there, and it's commonly described as being nearly impossible for anyone over 30 to operate (I'm 35 and I can confirm this). Snapchat's unique feature is that you can use it to send photos that disappear - perfect, ostensibly, for sending or receiving naughty pictures.

But it turns out that to use Snapchat for sexting is to be hopelessly behind the times. Its real utility is that it's an effortless way to blend text and images. I downloaded Snapchat last year at the behest of a lady friend, expecting a deluge of sexy photos - instead I received a lot of selfies and short videos overlaid with cryptic text. It took me six months to send my first "successful" snap: a video that panned down from the view out the window of a speeding car to a Steve Winwood CD in my hand, with "Higher Love" playing in the background and the words "$19.99 well spent" overlaid across the screen.

It's enough to make you pine for the good old days of typewriters and calligraphy.

Or maybe the good ol' days weren't so different after all. "There have always been many different scales of length and intimacy," Finn Brunton, an assistant professor in the media, culture and communication department at N.Y.U., said of written exchange. "People would do things to letters themselves - like perfuming them, or adding fingerprints, or sending flowers or pressed leaves - in order to imbue them with way more freight."

Which brings to mind dating apps, today's version of intimate correspondence, each of which have their own messaging functions, and which starkly illustrate the hierarchical quandary of modern communications. When, for instance, is it O.K. to friend a Tinder date on Facebook?

"I don't add anything besides texting until I've gone on at least one date," Ms. Weatherhead said. "I wouldn't follow them on any social networks until like date three or four, because I don't want to prejudge them. But I think I'm an anomaly."

And what about, gasp, a phone call?

"It would probably be a month or six weeks before we'd talk on the phone," she said. "When a guy calls me, I look at the phone like it's hot lava. Like, why are they calling me?"

Presumably none of them are sending perfumed letters either.

None of this is to say that technology hasn't changed things. "We've had nuances before," Professor Brunton said, "but we've never had them at this level of precision or diversity."

And it's not just our personal lives that are being invaded by all these different universes of chat. Messaging apps are coming soon to a workplace near you (if they're not already there). My company (and many, many others) uses an app called Slack, which allows you to set up different chat rooms for people who are collaborating on a given project. Or, as is often the case, collaborating on gossip or sharing GIFs of the rapper Pitbull.

Slack may be the most famous work-focused messaging app, but it's hardly alone. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I saw a billboard for a company called Twilio that read, cryptically, "Ask Your Developer." I happened to be riding with my friend Sanjay, a developer, so I asked him what, exactly, Twilio does. "It's a cloud-based VoIP and text-messaging platform," he said. Oh.

(Slack, by the way, has raised $340 million in venture capital; Twilio has raised nearly $250 million.)

Even apps that aren't built specifically for messaging - like social networks - now have a messaging component built into them. That's where we get things like Facebook Messenger, Instagram's direct messages and LinkedIn's messaging feature. The idea is that if you don't have to switch out of a social app to share or send something to a friend, it makes the app itself more appealing (or "sticky," to use the tech business term). The result is a lot of fragmented communities that people use in a variety of different ways, or maybe just a bunch of inconveniences.

"It can get messy when you're having a conversation with one person across like eight different channels," Ms. Weatherhead said.

But it's not so easy to consolidate. After all, different people in our lives are more comfortable with different forms of communication; it's not as if I can tell my dad he needs to start checking Drake's Instagram or download Snapchat.

On the other hand, it can also be entertaining.

"There's an incredible legacy of people using public venues for secret exchange of messages," Professor Brunton said. "You could use public documents to send a secret message, with a lover or a co-conspirator or whoever."

I got the sense that people would be perfectly happy to text or email, but that the variety of different methods opened up entirely new realms of creativity. It's as if our phones have made us all Hollywood directors, with an audience of whoever is in our various networks - whether it's a whole bunch of people or just a single simpatico soul.

"There's no good reason for it, it's just kind of hilarious," my sister said of the messages (like, "what are you getting mom for her birthday?") she cryptically embeds in Drake's Instagram comments. "There's just something funny about talking in the middle of a million people, but none of them are noticing." Besides, she added, "Maybe Drake will see it and chime in with a gift idea for Mom."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Text Me? Ping Me? Communications Overload in the Digital Age

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Cultural Studies There was a period last summer when my 25-year-old sister, Willa, decided to start communicating with me through comments on the rapper Drake's Instagram feed. Sometimes it would just be to say hi; other times to inform me of her plans for the weekend, or to relay an amusing anecdote.