Email is not the only way

I'm increasingly finding that I'm using email less and less as I move to other alternatives for text based communications. Email has been around for some time now. It was in 1995 that I first used it in a work environment. It's adoption amongst medium to large companies was virtually universal by 1997. I remember asking a major computer retailer for their email address in 1996 and being surprised they didn't have one!

Email is a very basic messaging system and one that hasn't changed much since its launch. What it fails to provide which many of its 'competitors' do is speed, context and conversation.

In the office, I use Microsoft Office Communicator more than email. It's great for quick internal queries. As a sender I receive quick answers to my questions and I hope that I provide them too. I like its informal conversational style. You feel that you are talking with someone and establishing a connection. Speed of message transmission is instant unlike email which can take 30 to 60 seconds to reach its destination. This means rapid response to a situation when required. With email there is no chance of a conversation (maybe that's why they're called threads?) and cumulatively a fair bit of time is wasted. I often find that email is 'fire and forget'. Fire off a message to colleague and both sender and recipient forget about it the action required or the question that needs to be answered. This is partly due to visibility, there is no public display of the message that has been sent. There is always that doubt as to whether the email has actually been received. Office Communicator also indicates 'presence status' - online, offline, away etc. This saves a huge amount of time knowing which colleagues are available. Tip: You can integrate the presence indicator with your employee directory so that each person's entry shows their presence status.

With more conversational tools like Office Communicator and Yammer message are visible and communication is more effective. With Office Communicator the speed means that actions and answer are very quick. With Yammer messages are public so are rarely ignored and forgotten. Even if aimed at a colleague someone else can step in and reply.

Yammer has a number of other strengths over email. Communications are structured in conversations and topics, using #tags. This makes following a line of work or thought easy to follow and helps when looking for old messages. On top of this Yammer has an excellent and fast search. All these features are missing from Outlook. No conversation style, no topics and a poor and slow search. Tip: To provide a better search I use Google Desktop.

For receiving and giving generic help and advice on intranets and social media I use Twitter, LinkedIn and of course blogs. All visible and easily searchable.

Socially, I tend to use Facebook and text more than email, again due to its conversation style but also because it provides context. If I'm organising or going to a party then everything is structured around one place in Facebook - the 'Event'. Often, I might have something to say that may be useful or of interest to others, say a film recommendation, so I post on their Wall. Texts, like Office Communicator are great for quick short messages. With phones like my Google G1 or the iPhone they are also displayed as conversations. Texts are often neglected in a work environment but they are a great alternative to email and phone, particularly if you are communicating with busy people, who tend to divert to voicemail.

Finally, what's all this got to do with intranets? Well, the intranet should be the 'way of working', the desktop that is the central point of all tasks and the communications hub. Tools such as Office Communicator and Yammer should be integrated into an intranet so that they are part and parcel of the working environment.