Our choice of communication channels reflects our social webs

Jeremy Wagstaff | Mon, 07/27/2009 2:57 PM | Sci-Tech

However much companies like MySpace, Friendster and Twitter think it's about them, it's not. It's about us, using their products to develop channels of communication.

The more these guys let us mix and match these channels, the more likely they'll still be around when the music stops.

Take a small recent event: Facebook's launch of an update for their application which runs on the BlackBerry.

Importantly, they dropped the button that lets you digitally poke people - my, did that idea get old quickly.

But they also did something clever. Now, users found that their Facebook messages also appeared in their email program.

This wasn't that unusual, since instant messages on services like Google Talk also appeared there.

But this Facebook thing was a bit of a first. And a bit of a historic moment, I suspect, in the evolution of all this web stuff.

First a bit of history. We all started out with email. That was how we communicated online.

We had work email. And home email.

Then instant messaging.

Then SMS or texting came along.

Then Facebook, Friendster, LinkedIn, orkut, twitter, Skype etc etc etc.

Now we have dozens of what we could call channels that we use to communicate with our friends, colleagues, relatives and enemies.

In the classes I teach, some students have about a dozen different windows open at the same time. And they have a couple of phones on the go too.

It looks messy, but actually it makes perfect sense to these people.

Email is obviously where most of us over the age of 25 do most of our communicating online.

Facebook is where a lot of people under the age do it.

Both are sorts of "clearing houses" for all our communicating.

People over the age of 25 use Facebook for communicating with intimate friends in a different way.

Or different people in an intimate way.

I've noticed Facebook users - at least in my sector - share information that is the sort of things they'd share in postcards, or at cocktail parties, or in once-a-year letters.

Facebook for them is less a clearing house than a posting house.

But then there's all the other channels.

Instant messaging is for stuff that can't wait - either because it's important or it's too inane to waste an email on.

Texting is usually for geographically specific stuff - just landed, home in an hour. Buy broccoli.

SMS cuts through all the clutter.

But the point is this: We have quickly adapted these channels to our needs, and those needs may vary, but for us they're specific, and they each have their own purpose.

There are some people I'd never SMS. And some people I'd message on Facebook that I'd never email. Some people I'd Skype but I'd never actually call.

Sounds bizarre, maybe, but it's just a reflection of the complex social webs we weave.

Which brings me back to Facebook on a Blackberry.

It might seem daft to have so many different channels, if actually they all are controlled from our email.

But the origin of each message is clearly marked. Our channels align but don't merge.

In other words, we keep all the channels we want, to reflect the complexity of our world and the kind of communications we have in it.

But if any company is going to be successful in the long term in this world, they'll have to allow those channels to be merged.

We want to keep our separate channels, but we don't want to have fiddle with them. For example, I may prefer to communicate with some people via Facebook - casual updates, a birthday wish, a picture that makes me realize they've just had twins - but not establish a long email exchange.

Twitter is an obvious reflection of this.

Some report suggested that people are signing up for it, but not twittering themselves.

So Twitter isn't a success?

No. It is. It's just a different form of communication.

Just like I might hold forth at a party and have everyone rapt by my tale-telling - it has happened, really - so do people follow the interesting, the outgoing, the prolific, on Twitter.

That they're passive in that doesn't matter. They're there.

It's another channel.

Twitter is a news channel for some people, an update channel for others, a lifeline for others, a distraction for others. The more channels we have, the more we'll find ways of using them.

The companies that get this and make it easy for us to use them in the myriad ways we haven't even dreamed of yet, will still be around to pick up the big bucks that, one day, will start to fall.

(c) 2009 Loose Wire Pte Ltd