If you want me to respond to your next email, you should try adding an emoticon to it. Well, that's the sort of thing Crystal says I like. Crystal Knows, a start-up in Nashville, Tennessee, calls its app "the biggest improvement to email since spellcheck". It is part of a growing suite of high-tech tools, some serious, some silly, that promise to help people talk to each other more effectively. You tell the system who you want to contact and it then sifts through what that person has posted online, mostly on social media and what comes up in a Google search. It then devises a list of recommendations, using methods borrowed from established tests that look at the Big Five personality traits, on how to style your emails to get the best response. For an email to my editor, for example, Crystal suggests that I ditch the formal greetings and not bore him with anything he's heard before. With my girlfriend, it advises some self-deprecating humour. And for people reaching out to me, it proposes adding an emoticon.
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