Over the past few centuries, communication has evolved massively, going from spoken word and letters to voice calls and emails in about 200 years. Despite this massive evolution a lot of the core skills and traits needed for these new technologies are identical to those needed for the technologies of the past. 
I came to this realization as I was reading through an article by Natasha Lekic, where she talks about the five things that we can learn about writing emails from the exchanges between Steve Jobs, and James Murdoch of Newscorp: have one purpose, simple design, remove filler, use an active voice, and close with a request. While these strategies are key to communicating more effectively via email, only applying them to communication via email would be a waste. Steve Jobs had learned all of these strategies for improving communication over email before the internet even existed, meaning that to truly improve email writing and online communications it is crucial to focus on in-person and base communication skills. 
We see so much of our world revolve around online communication, however, it often fails to resonate with people. While it is important to have good online communication skills, to truly advance the core skills the focus needs to be on improving general and in-person communication skills and learn how to apply them to other avenues. This is largely because the true payoff for online communication is done either in person or over a voice call. Also, online communication often strips away the emotion in the message. If someone focuses on building up online communication skills it can worsen their ability to express and understand emotion in communication and could have their skills dated based on technological development. Whereas focusing on developing in-person and general communication has emotional communication and reading at its core and can be adapted to how we develop rather than being hyper-specialized
I thought that bringing up how emotion is sometimes stripped away during online communication was a really good point. There have been so many times where I, or the person I was emailing or texting have misinterpreted what the other was saying. Emotions are very hard to convey over messages because the receiver does not hear your tone or is able to see your body language. What are additional pros and cons to communicating via email?
My favorite line from this post is when you acknowledge the payoff is usually in person for online communication. If you are a good online communicator, then it is important to keep that up in person. Online communication can only get you so far. I do agree that having strong in person communication skills are very important to any kind of career, relationship, etc. How will the communication skills of future generations who have had iPads since they were two years old hold up?