I find the social dynamics of To/CC/BCC really interesting. You only see it in Emails and it doesn't exist in any other communication medium. Most social communication platforms I can think of the top of my head only really support the "To" part of email.
Actually, the To/Cc thing predates email by quite a bit. CC stands for "carbon copy" [1], which referred to typing a letter with a sandwich of regular paper and carbon paper, so that you got one or more copies in addition to your original. The To/Cc headings were a common thing on paper memos.
I'm sure the Bcc behavior was common as well with paper memos, but I suspect the name only appeared with the invention of email. [2]
The origins of bcc from back in the days of carbon paper (and after that the xerox, dot matrix printer and laser printer) was strictly as a way to give a copy of a particular correspondence to someone without the actual recipient knowing that you were doing so.
The current use of bcc more or less contradicts that and has taken on a whole new meaning.
Yes - things like Twitter, IM group chats (FB/Hangouts/even IRC), all have a single "ring" of attention. A message is either to you, or to a group. There is no way for the sender to dial up/down the level of "attention" or send other signals when sending a message.
Some examples (admittedly, these are how they are used in my workplace and life, other people may perceive these differently, which is also interesting):
- BCC has an interesting side-effect of being able to drop somebody from the conversation, but notify them of that fact at the same time.
- CC is sometimes used as a "heads up". It means "I'm interested in you reading this, but I'm not asking you to do anything right now."
- To is explicit "I would like you to read this, and there's probably some action you need to do."
That said, these are used in my workplace so these rules don't really apply when sending more informal mails between family members and the like. I have tended to use CC at home when sending emails to teachers, keeping my spouse in the loop.
You can't really deliver the same messages within a Facebook conversation or a Google Chat. I think Twitter has some potential since the "to" line is fluid, but I treat the platform as read-only and find it extremely chaotic and unorganized.
> CC is sometimes used as a "heads up". It means "I'm interested in you reading this, but I'm not asking you to do anything right now."
It bothers me that Gmail combines the To and CC recipients into a single line. You have to do some investigating to figure out who's on To and who's on CC.
I think most of that dynamic was pretty common in paper memos. The only thing I see as plausibly novel is the "moving to Bcc" thing, where you politely drop participants from a Cc list.
CC and BCC originate from secretaries taking notes on desks in large firms. There was a note for the person who the message was intended for and a carbon copy (literally a sheet of carbon under the top note) that would be archived. Blind Carbon Copies were simply copies that the original intended recipient was not aware of; ergo, one might say that Carbon copies are significantly older than email.
CC and BCC are practical parts of communication but only formalized in a technical manner (beyond their physical carbon counterparts) in email, but we certainly engage in conversations which are of an "FYI" nature all the time.
Source: I am a communications nerd both from a technical and historic perspective.
Definitely sometimes the case that it's secretive. I'd say I more usually use BCC like "You don't need to get involved in this conversation, but your name was mentioned and/or it's something you would want to know about." Kinda like covering your own ass so that somebody doesn't think you were talking behind their back or going over their head.
It's more like making a tape recording of a conversation you are having with someone and playing it to someone else who wasn't part of the conversation. And without the person being recorded knowing that you did that.
