I'm not among the favored few who've seen it, my daily reminder of how low my cool rating really is.
The announcement yesterday that Facebook is smushing (tech term) all communication into one (in)coherent stream--Facebook Messaging--makes sense from a purely where-is-that perspective.
Case in point: a call yesterday from a potential client in regard to a possible speaking engagement. I always want to know how people got to us. Mary, the caller, knew instantly, having heard my radio interview on The American Entrepreneur show last summer. But I couldn't remember how the radio show had found me so, as you (at least I guiltily) do (multit-ing even as I warn people against it), I started searching while we were on the phone.
I was able to find all the follow-on conversation between the producer and me but not the original email. Perhaps it was in the NetAge catchall account, I thought, but that should have come through via forwards to me, if it really was directed at me. Maybe I deleted it inadvertently. Maybe it came through LinkedIn? Had it possibly come via Facebook? Or, most unlikely, had it come to my gmail account that no one, including me, uses except for online signups? Finally the answer dawns. The producer had, imagine, called me!
And the other quick example from yesterday: I polled M, J, P, and R on a pricing issue. Since my major mode of communication with two of them (M & J) is via text and I'm prone to text with the other two, I sent the same text to all four. (No, wait, I'm lying: I actually asked J via that really old fashioned method, face-to-face speech.) I had answers rather quickly from all of them. But each was in a different text and I had to "assemble" the results in that super old fashioned medium, my head.
Point is that unified communication, a lofty, long talked about goal, is a great idea. But, as the Washington Post's Melissa Bell notes this morning, echoing my very first reaction, is the privacy concern. Much as I use and love Facebook, sadly the brand is associated with privacy anxiety.
So, will I use it? Not until they invite me...
