on November 10, 2005 08:10 AM Blogs are one-to-many communication. My words, flung to the Internet. Scoured by search engines. Subscribed to or stumbled upon.
Skype conversations are mulitparty. It's the difference between a standup comic with a microphone and an improv troupe. Between an a capella soloist and a choir. Between a soliloquy and a play.
There is a conversation among bloggers, if you can call it that. Threads very loosely joined. I see something in someone else's blog and post a reply in mine. Mostly, though, blogs are monologous. Monoblogs, if you will. Masterblogtion, to be unkind. Conversations, like sex, are so much better when you're not alone. They have the gusto of interpersonal psychology. Dramatic structure. Clarification of thought. Action and reaction.
When we treat multiparty conversations as blogfodder, is it useful? Often. We see this, to a degree, in some of Bill Campbell's interviews. All parties consent, one party cleans up a conversation and publishes it. Then Skype Journal's readers become privy to heretofore private conversation. And they can capitalize on Bill's access and effort. Later, strangers will find it via Google, other bloggers will link to it (it now has a permalink), and that little talk is now history.
Does making private conversations public (some might call it publication) serve a public good? Build the creative commons? Yes, to the degree the conversation itself warrants it. The same logic that applies to blogging and podcasting applies here.
Some tools, like Pamela, make it easier to archive my conversations on servers by blogging the text chats and podcasting the audio ones. Few of my conversations are Google-worthy, let alone blogworthy, but some will be important for private family blogs and other conversations will be handy in private project and team blogs.
So the tools and personal incentives are coming together to make conversation sharing cheap, easy, fun, and rewarding.
For every voice chat I have, I have 10 text chats, so it won't take many Skypers publishing conversations to become a significant factor in search results.
As millions of conversations leave digital footprints, joining our collective memory organ, and as we choose to publish some of them the way we do blog posts, we'll see a new connective tissue emerge. A Technorati of dialog. A Google of conversations. So I can discover other people talking about the same local issues that I am. So I can join ongoing conference calls the way some people join a listserv thread.
And as our conversations enter the commons, we will be that much smarter, that much more connected, that much better informed about our world, our communities, and ourselves.
on October 9, 2005 07:21 PM Help me talk better.
There is no way I'm going to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. It's crazy. Nevertheless, National Novel Writing Month is in November this year. Hundreds of "winners" cross the finish line through the power of a clear goal (50k words), lowered expectations (this is a rough draft; quality follows quantity), and a deadline.
Many of my conversations would benefit from a deadline.
Two kinds of deadlines:
This is standard stuff on running better meetings.
I want Skype to help by being more aware of time. For example:
I can start an egg timer or download a software timer. But those are both out of context and not part of the collaboration. Time boxing within the user interface, preserving the visual and cognitive framework of the call/chat will improve the success of the conversation.
This is exactly the kind of value-add I'd like users and developers to build. However today's license, terms of service, and API are hostile to UI changes.
You can see that Skype's design has been amazing about getting users into a conversation, and the hard work of keeping the technical quality high. Now it's time to go inside the call: Help our many styles of conversation be more effective.
I don't expect Skype to help me organize a party, plan a wedding, play a game, hold a quality circle meeting, answer a bomb threat, or talk about my car with a potential bidder. I do want Skype (sometime in 2006, please) to let me use, create and share "conversation helpers" the way I use, create and share templates in PowerPoint and Word. Let the power of millions of users shape conversation to their ends.
As with PowerPoint templates, most conversations guides will be free and a few worth money. Please don't think of this as a ringtone opportunity. Think of this as (a) part of Skype's platforming strategy, (b) making Skype more social (as we share conversation helpers), (c) making Skype conversations more productive than conversations in other media.
So often you just reach out and touch someone, a personal connection. But then...
How much do you talk on purpose?
p.s. I'm enjoying No Plot? No Problem! right now. Tips on prepping for and surviving your four week novel writing.
p.p.s Congrats to Hyland Baron for joining the NaNoWriMo team. Hyland makes projects more fun and effective.
on July 6, 2005 02:15 PM Skype has an online survey up. It's all about habits and practices - but there seems to have been little thinking on and stretch in terms of options, scales, wants and wishlists. It's not well designed, poorly structured, with many gaps in areas covered, and no real behavioural information being collected. A wasted opportunity!
Just because online surveys are simple doesn't mean they shouldn't be well thought out. It's also more dangerous to have information that is incomplete or poorly collected than to have no information at all. Unfortunately many organisations fall into this trap. There is down and dirty research -- this is not it.
Breaking down the survey to understand the gaps further, there are problems in several areas :
1. Areas of Coverage :
* No demographic profiling - age, gender, income, etc - to contextualise responses
* Inadequate coverage of Skype's offerings - what about conference calling, chat and multi-chat, Skype on PDA's, Skype API, forums - areas of satisfaction and problems with them? For instance, how many have made a conference call with SkypeOut - one problem could be tackling DTMF tones
* No behavioural information of depth and value like buddy lists, minutes and hours spent on each feature, how many failed calls, what percentage is acceptable, what percentage local vs international calls, whether Skype is set to a call-centric or chat-centric mode, etc
* No developer products included : video chat, presence servers, outlook import, other plugins. These form a vital part of the total offering from a customer's point of view, and make the Skype experience richer - it would have been interesting to study awareness, usage and motivations for them.
* No feature comparisons with other products competing in the same space from a user's perspective - IM, other VOIP offerings, even landlines and cell phones - resulting in answers in a vacuum without benchmarks and best-in-class standards that always make responses so much more reliable and meaningful, particularly when satisfaction is involved. For instance, would you say your Skype billing experience is better than or worse than your current cellular provider? Landline carrier? Amazon? Other? NA? What's your best billing experience online?
* Very little space offered for opportunities to improve
* Even less on what Skype really means to users today and how is it changing the way they communicate, impact on their communication behaviour and habits.
* Branding and positioning issues - how is Skype positioned in the customer's mind? What associations, what image, what relationship, strength of stickiness and loyalty? I know Skype is beginning to think of brand - and that's a great step. I also hope that they remember the brand is not just what the company communicates, but as it rests in user's minds and hearts and leaves it imprints. I'd have loved to see some brand-related questions here.
2. Questionnaire design and structure:
* Options and choices (dropdown boxes) provided seem inadequate in most areas. The connection speed options are not customer friendly. Reasons for using don't include - for business, for travel, for connecting with family abroad etc. Another instance:
Why did you start using Skype Voicemail? (check all that apply)Thought it was cool
Wanted to save money
Wanted to call people abroad
Other
These options make little sense in the context of voicemail - none of the potential reasons for using Voicemail are listed in the options. It seems like these questions have been dumped blindly from the earlier SkypeOut section.
* Areas for improvement in all sections are left as an open-ended space; some amount of stimulus for thought might have been provided for generating more meaningful suggestions. For instance, for Voicemail, there are so many possiblities - from saving copies to sending group messages or not having to listen to your message for the 5th time when sending.
* Scale used for satisfaction - the 3-point scale : very satisfied-satisfied-not satisfied again doesn't really offer up much - first, there aren't enough gradations to really determine satisfaction to make it a good customer service scale and second, satisfaction must always be measured against perceived benchmarks, without which it can be meaningless.
Infusing the power of deadlines and templates into Skype conversations