a) there are different types of written communication pattern each with differing timeliness, retention, formality, reliability, audience reach, presence and privacy requirements
b) given (a) you need a tool (or set of tools) that support the different patterns

In companies, its often the case that you only have email, so all non-verbal communciation is forced down a single pipe. You innediately see the difference introducing chat / IM to an organisation makes; it takes away email traffic as people split over the 2 pipes.

I dont see facebook as that revolutionary it just happens to support 3 or 4 different communication styles and tells me when my friends are online (presence) so i can pick the best style.

My friends are still a function of who I am not what tool I use. In the same way, the telephone network is not a place I go its a place that provides the infrastructure to communicate.

Ultimately I think this means all the social networks will eventually fade into the background and we’ll have a set of tools on whatever device were on that facilitate communication on that infrastructure without us being aware of it and the walled gardens go away.

Based on: my context (locations, patience, network acess, online / offline, device constraints such as size) AND the context of the person or people I want to communicate with AND the type of communication (fire and forget, guaranteed delivery, retention period, formality, length) AND the audience size a selection of tools will facilitate and we’ll move seamlessly between them.

Sometimes the tools will help us decide, sometimes we’ll pick. You can already see this with twitter where you can opt for we, destop client or sms as your interface depending on your context.

Imagine that extrapolated across each available channel style and I think thats where we’ll be.

So when used as a business tool, social networks add another dimension to interactions both internally and with authenticated and reliable outside partners, customers or alumni.

The “privacy” of Facebook is lauded as one of its attractions, but it is still privacy controlled by Facebook, not by us, so it fails me as a store of my attention/intention because I don’t control the application of that data, Facebook does. I have some coarse-grained control over who Facebook will allow to see it, but I can’t prevent Facebook itself making use of it.

I’m playing a bit with Clearspace – it’s ‘behind the firewall’ or externally hosted … I’m looking at an internal implementation – will let you know how I get along.

Can yous see BT doing email-free days like: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7049275.stm

People can choose to use communication tools in a political and arse covering way or they can choose to use them more openly and personally. Within business email environments, the former is most prevalent, within blogs and other web 2.0 manifestations, the latter seems more possible and, indeed, expected.

But if Facebook mail becomes popular, it would end up being blighted by the volume problem that blights email. Those with little time who receive too much Facebook mail would still need to hand off the triage role to someone with more time on their hands. The ‘spam filtering’ is helpful, but this limits the medium as you can’t always easily connect with the people you want or need.

I can see how those with huge amounts of email can see the benefit of Facebook mail (for the time being at least), but the filtering process is a bit ham-fisted at the moment. I’m sure this will improve with time though.