Conversationware

Someone I was speaking to recently said that companies don’t need blogs if they’re using message boards - and it wasn’t the first time I’d heard that.

Instinctively though, I felt there was a difference in terms of how companies could engage (have conversations) with a wide audience - with current blog technology in the early stages at least.

Having a scout around my favourite ‘principles of blogging’ sites, I found Tom Chandler doing his usual excellent job of articulating just why blogs are better, with other links around the subject.

It’s interesting that companies worry about blogging, and yet allow a ‘free for all’ within their message boards. Perhaps its just that anything new = automatically bad until proven otherwise.

Another favourite blogging (copywriting) site The Copywriters Crucible pointed out this youtube video, with poor sound, but very ‘new-media’ funny.

A grand title, but I like the play on words.

I was very taken with the post on new presence from Alec Saunders, it does make you think.

The presence word seems to have been bandied about as the future of VOIP, and looking back, this has been for quite some time without massive developments. Most Enterprises I talk to haven’t yet even started to think IM.

Having looked at a lot of the responses, and considered a viewpoint, I have to say that MY presence isn’t yet important to me. I may be interested in someone elses, but I don’t really care that they’re present, just whether they have the time to communicate right now.

I can’t envisage me being IM’d as solving my information overload problem. Thus highlighting the big difference between seeing someone else being present, and making my own presence known. Where is the permission element?

I also can’t imagine circumstances where I would have enough time to manage the constantly changing context, relationship and profile information. Will users change their status….not me.

Simply, the most useful thing about an IM client when I see someone logged on, is that it ‘reminds’ me that I want to discuss something with them. I may or may not wish to enter into a real time discourse - often I’ll email them anyway, helping with my scheduling, which may sound like a cardinal sin to technocrats, but it’s only for a lack of sufficient information management tools…honest.

Perhaps what we really need is a conversation management tool - something that reminds us about things we have to do at an appropriate time! The inbox used to be enough as a ‘to do’ list….but no more. There are lots of point solutions, the IM box, the email inbox, the Enteprise portal, Blogs, Community Ware, RSS Readers and so forth.

My wife tells me I should be more organised - and I think being helped to plan things properly is just what is missing.