Tweet, Text or Email?
By Ethan Wetzell
Ethan shares some insight on proper ways to utilize these three ways of communication – Tweet, Text or Email.
Communication. Whether we are working on installed or mobile systems, audio or video systems, communication is at the heart of everything we do. However, while we work toward our goals of providing quality and innovative solutions for our customers, communication is a key element of managing projects, gathering requirements and, well, talking to each other.
I would like to examine some of the options that are out there and provide some insight into possible applications for each. While it is ill-advised to dismiss some of these methods outright, it is equally unfortunate to utilize them improperly. As we all know, using the wrong tool for the wrong job generally leads to nothing but pain, so I hope to be able to provide some insight into how to get the most out of some of the options that are available.
I am going to focus on three major methods for communication outside of the traditional e-mail that we all know and love-SMS, Twitter and Facebook. Each of these provides some unique and innovative ways to communicate and have become a part of our modern, “connected” society. However, there are also pitfalls to each and, when used improperly, can create unprecedented levels of frustration for all parties involved.
SMS
SMS or Short Messaging Service gives us some clues to its ideal usage in its very name. They key word is short-messages are generally limited to 160 characters. Often referred to as “texting”, SMS has grown exponentially in popularity in recent years, although the first SMS message was actually sent in 1992.
SMS has ubiquity, since these days, it is quite difficult to find a cell phone that does not support it. However, SMS messages frequently require additional data plans or incur additional charges from a user’s cell phone provider.
SMS has the advantage of being able to quickly relay a short, simple message directly to most mobile devices. However, using SMS for formal communication can be very difficult for a number of reasons-the message length limitation, archiving and searching of messages and lack of subject lines are just a few. SMS actually spawned a whole new language known as “L33T Speak” (short hand for “elite speak”) to help shorten messages and help navigate numeric keypads. “L b2 wrk @ 8 cu th3n” (“I will be to work at 8:00, see you then.”) might not be the kind of message you would send to a client…
Like SMS, Twitter provides us some clues to its ideal usage in its description. Twitter describes itself as “a micro-blogging service”-essentially a blog post consisting of 140-character messages called Tweets.
Twitter can be a little hard to get one’s head around, with its ecosystem of Tweeters (occasionally- and sometimes justifiably- referred to as Twits), followers, symbols such as @ and #, and the overall interface, but here it is in a nutshell.
Twitter is generally a public conversation. When one posts to Twitter, that post is made available publicly for everyone to see on Twitter and can be searched. Additionally, Twitter members may “follow” another user which results in them being sent all of that user’s posts directly. Following is not always a full-duplex operation-user A may follow user B, but that does not necessarily mean that user B follows user A.
While it is possible to send direct messages between Twitter users and it is possible to keep ones’ posts only visible to that user’s Followers by keeping ones account private, this is not the typical usage.
Like SMS, Twitter also has limitations when it comes to formal communication due to its public nature, message length limitation and searching and archiving features. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to carry on a coherent conversation with many people, as it is entirely possible many of the readers are not seeing all posts from all participants in the “conversation”. It is a bit like a star network, where the central device (the original Tweeter) sees all of the messages, but the edge devices (the other Tweeters who do not follow each other) might not see what the others are doing or saying.
Sounds totally useless, right? A great platform for narcissistic people to advertise to the world what they had for lunch and how much they had sitting in traffic jams? Yes, the SNR ratio on Twitter can be quite poor-if used improperly.
However, Twitter can be a great venue for keeping up with customers and other entities that you are interested in-and who know how to send meaningful messages. For example, I use it to keep up on Android and IOS developers whose work I’m interested in (and who frequently mention their new projects and status updates to the community via Twitter before any other avenues).
And the occasional one-liners that pop into my feed from Steve Martin have a great way of brightening my day.
Facebook is the current darling of the social media world. Certainly, there are others, such as MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, etc., but Facebook is by far the current king (hey, a movie was even made about the darn thing).
Facebook is interesting, because its potential diversity of use can vary widely depending on the individual. For example, I keep my personal page very private and locked down, accessible by only my “Friends” and with the primary goal of keeping in touch with people scattered all over the globe while I am on the road, while others keep it wide open to the public and use it to play games and follow the activities of others by “Liking” them.
Facebook provides the ability to share photos, have private or public conversations and send direct private messages to other uses. Facebook also provides fairly granular control over access to posts and messages and will allow a user to define who can see what kind of content and create groups of “Friends” with certain properties and access permissions. Unfortunately, this is achieved through the use of extremely convoluted, complex and constantly changing settings, for which Facebook has frequently been publicly chastised.
So, what do we do with all this stuff?
All of these tools have specific applications, but do any of them directly bring about the end of e-mail as we know it? In my mind, occasionally, the answer is “Yes”, but in many others, it is a resounding “No”.
So, how does one choose what method to use and when to use it? I suggest that one consider both the detail and complexity of the message as well as the intended or expected response to a message. Here are a few examples:
- Twitter-WHAT I’m working on (“Hey world, cool new product coming.”)
- SMS-WHEN I’m working on it (“I’ll be at the job site at 9:30.”)
- E-mail-HOW to work on it (“OK, let’s discuss whether we should use a gating or gain-sharing automixing algorithm.”)
- Facebook-Perhaps, all of the above.
In addition to the means and methods mentioned above, I believe that there are some other very serious considerations that must be addressed, particularly when we are discussing communication and correspondence that is related to a project.
How is the communication documented and managed?-E-mail has a huge advantage of being able to be stored as archives, filed, sorted by sender or subject and searched with the click of a button. It is very easy to find old messages or forward them to new users. With the other methods of communication, this becomes a challenge-if it is possible at all. Good project management requires good documentation management, and e-mail provides unique tools for this that are not easily matched.
How secure is the documentation?-Frequently, sensitive information may need to be sent from one user to another. E-mail offers a variety of encryption methods that may be used, but this is not true of other methods of communication. To the contrary, Twitter encourages users to be public with their Tweets-to the point that every public Tweet ever made since March, 2006 has been archived by the Library of Congress. But at least we know part of the answer to the last question…
Where is the communication stored and what might it be used for?-When information such as photos or messages are sent via Facebook, that information is transferred to-and stored on-Facebook’s servers. Many industries and companies have very strict rules regarding data storage and retention, and using these services may run afoul of those policies. This might not be a problem for you and your company, but it might be a problem for your client.
The Holy Grail is the next big technology that will find an elegant way of integrating all of this into a single service that can consolidate all of our information info a single interface for communication and collaboration. This has been tried, most notably by the likes of the now-defunct Google Wave and the more recent Facebook Messages that aims to consolidate E-mail, SMS, IM and direct messaging into a single interface. Unfortunately, reviews to date have not been good, and there are still those pesky data storage and privacy issues.
New tools will continue to emerge, and like the good engineers and project managers we all strive to be, it is up to us to explore the options and select the right tool for the job.