How do you communicate?
If you wish to advertise something to the world at large, you could try to make a telephone call to everyone who is likely to be interested. There are limited circumstances in which this might be effective but, if there are large numbers of possible customers and no interaction is required, it is likely to be more effective to place an advertisement in a newspaper, magazine, or on radio, television, your website or eBay.
The opposite is also true: if you want to hold a private conversation with someone, it is unlikely that you would use a megaphone in the street, write content on your public website or send a public message on Twitter. You would probably choose a more appropriate method, such as a telephone call, email, text or, perhaps, a direct message on Twitter.
From the business point of view, it is important that we understand the behaviour we need, that we understand the behaviour provided by available facilities, and that we choose facilities according to how well those behaviours are matched.
There are always choices
These fundamentals apply whether we are discussing personal conversations, business presentations, letters, newspaper articles, advertisements or letters, telephone conversations, web pages, blogs, email, text, Twitter, or anything else. We can identify the essential characteristics of our requirements and use them to guide our selection of technical facilities.
The two cases above are examples of a fairly common distinction between publish-and-subscribe and point-to-point models of communication. From a technical point of view, there are facilities available which are known to be specific to one model or the other or to accommodate both.
In general, your requirements are likely to be more complicated and less well understood. They are likely to involve communication with several groups of people with different needs; and they might involve a variety of types of communication with the same groups of people. In these cases, there is a need for our communication to be consistent both between people in the same groups and for individuals who belong to multiple groups.
If you have ever received an offer to take advantage of a reduced price for one of the last few places at an event which you have already booked to attend at a higher price, then you probably understand the kind of thing that I am talking about!
What advantages are available?
Based on some experience of these issues in a range of scientific, technical, commercial and social situations, I have arrived at a set of three main areas of advantage which arise from matching these behaviours:
- the applicability of selected solutions is easier to understand
- changes in both requirements and technologies are easier to accommodate
- there is increased opportunity to reuse solutions.
Each of these advantages is worthwhile when considered alone. Together they provide a powerful incentive to improve our selection of technologies for business purposes.
In forthcoming posts, let’s explore each of these advantages as they apply to online communication.
