Ask HN: Do you use communication tools differently now?

I have noted a change in communication techniques in my company, and am wondering if its a widespread change. With the shift from phones to email to IM, there seemed to be an advantage where messages could be posted to a person or group, and in async fashion a reply received in short order. A sender did not have to find an open slot in the receiver's schedule for a meeting or call. A simple queue was established that made scheduling less important. Now I'm finding more success in "bugging" people I need information from, because email and IM are being increasingly ignored for hours or days in attempt to manage workflows. People schedule time to review messages, at times once a day or a few times a week and in the end make the communication bottlenecks worse than in the pre-IM days. In some cases a carefully crafted email with an ask does not find the 1 minute window needed to answer (which in turn creates a permanent, searchable reference), and we wind up having meetings. "This meeting could have been an email" is painfullt ironic in this scenario.