Does technology make it harder to direct your message?

The other day in class, we were discussing the concept of directing a message to a specific person. It was said that one way to get your message to someone important would be to tell someone, who tells someone else, and so on until eventually it reached whom it needed to. However, in today’s day in age, does technology make it harder to get your message to reach where it should? This may seem counterintuitive because technology helps one to reach out to many more people. Nonetheless due to the volume of emails, social networking sites, and daily inflow of networking information, do more things slip through the cracks?

Everyone has experienced that moment of dread when you realize an important email was accidentally saved to the spam folder. This is just one example of how messages can be overlooked or lost within the massive inflow of data. Can one count on their message being passed on simply by forwarding it to someone through many of the networking sites. Would it be more efficient to pass your message on in person? Would that affect the odds of the message being passed on?

In class we discussed that not only does the message and system of delivery matter, but also the person delivering the message. The example of someone who sends many superfluous emails, may find their messages ignore. This brings the notion of credibility into the picture. The way to increase the odds of your message being passed on is to have someone with high credibility receive it and then to also pass the message on.