I participated in a work-shop today whith about thirty engineers, where communication came up as a success factor in this highly engineered project. As I was the representative from the marketing communication department, they all looked at me every time this success factor came up, and it actually took me a while to understand that they meant information. Not communication.
It’s a complicated area and one obvious success factor is to inform people properly so that they don’t misunderstand what they are supposed to do. Information rather than communication.
The difference isn't always clear. There is even a word for one-way communication. How do you communicate with someone that doesn't answear? That’s information and nothing else. I couldn’t help but twitterize this issue.
Is Twitter a forum for information or a forum for communication?
Most people with some Twitter experience would probably say that it is a forum for communication. It is a social media, which means that we're talking communication, rather than information. However, there are numerous twitter profiles, following not one single person, and just use the medium for informing about what they think and do, or even worse just use Twitter to promote their products.
If we for the sake of this blog post could agree that Twitter is a social media though, which would mean communication rather than information, I just have one other question: Why are the people we communicate with called followers? A follower in my mind is not someone you communicate with. Could possibly be someone that you'd inform.
Facebook "followers" are called friends. Linkedin "followers" are called connections. Both these are more communicative. Why not call them contacts? Or connections, but that's already taken.
Ideas someone?
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