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Posts Tagged ‘business users’

Facemail Will Be A Disaster For Businesses

December 2nd, 2010 by Erin Posted in Business | No Comments »

“Email is dead,” claimed Mark Zuckerberg as he launched the new Facemail Messaging service a few weeks ago.

Zuckerberg believes the messaging service – which is “not e-mail” – will mark the end of traditional e-mail as we know it.

Essentially, Facemail will:

- replace a subject-based list of email with a people-based list.

- unify some media.

- archive messages permanently.

Innovative for sure, but will Facemail really replace enterprise email?

Not so fast.

Facemail poses many problems for businesses – large and small.

How?

First, let’s look at the issue of replacing subject-based lists with a people-based lists.

Facebook would have us believe that the standard email setup of subject/recipients/text is antiquated. It proposes that the inbox is better organized as a list of conversations with people, not as a list of topics.

In the new Facebook Messaging, you’ll see a list of people; when you click on a person, you’ll see a list of all the messages you and that person have ever exchanged.

It’s certainly possible that this idea would be useful for a social inbox, but for business? Not so much. Most business users need to be able to follow the thread of a conversation, yet keep several conversations on different topics separate — even if the conversations are with the same people.

It also looks as though Facebook won’t provide control over the recipient list when replying to a thread. This, too, is bad for business — it’s important for users to be able to add and delete recipients and spawn side-conversations.

Second, the issue of unified media.

Facemail is email, text messaging, and instant messaging (or chat) all rolled into one. There’s talk of Skype being included as well. This isn’t exactly triumphant news. Many enterprise email systems already have unified messaging features – and guess what? They’re great for those people who communicate in a social context, but for business it’s much less important. The tools are always available for everyone to get email when they need it.

Lastly, the permanent archival of messages.

Facebook says it will preserve these messages – text, chat, messages – forever. And, THAT could be very problematic for employers and inhouse counsel which have their own retention policies in place. For instance, if a company typically deletes e-mail every 90 days, it will be unable to enforce that on e-mails created in Facemail.

Keeping data forever is just not an option for companies. The legal risk is too overwhelming.

Now, companies that already have policies in place for handling outside e-mail and chat providers will have to ask their inhouse counsel to develop new policies that categorize Facebook with the rest of those services.

E-mail is still a useful service – and contrary to what Zuckerberg believes, it’s not going away just yet.

Can you picture a leading company exec sending a top secret inner-office memo to a colleague through Facemail?

Sorry Zuckerberg, but we’re not quite there yet.

 Tags: business users, enterprise email, facebook, facemail, mark zuckerberg, messaging service, traditional email

Essential Applications for Business Users, Part I

June 26th, 2008 by Gregory Silvano Posted in Small Business | 1 Comment »

If you had to set up your new computer right now, which apps are you going to install first?  Which applications are your mission-critical, must-have apps?  Besides Microsoft Office, here’s my list of the must-have applications for any business user:

MindMapper 2008 Professional Edition

If you haven’t used a mind mapping tool, Google “mind mapping” right now.  Aside from the cheesy name, it really is a very intuitive and productive way to jot down your ideas.  We downloaded a half dozen tools and found MindMapper 2008 to be the best of the bunch.  MindMapper had the most polished UI and was the only option that allowed us to quickly create mind maps without needing the mouse.

Axure

It’s not easy to mock up your ideas into something visual.  I have seen clients create mockups in Powerpoint, Excel, Word, HTML, Visio, Paintshop Pro, and just about any other tool imaginable.  We stumbled on Axure and absolutely love it.  It’s the first one we’ve used that actually enabled you to quickly create mockups without a steep learning curve or fighting the tool.

GoToMeeting

Conference call, share your screen, draw on your screen, make any attendee the presenter.  All with a 2MB download and $50/month.  Perfect.  We have several licenses and spend hours a day on GoToMeeting.  It does exactly what you need it to do, and nothing more.  GoToMeeting knows what it’s designed for and it doesn’t try to be something it isn’t.  If you collaborate with colleagues in several locations, GoToMeeting is an absolute must. 

CaseComplete

OK, nobody likes use cases, but if you’re trying to create business requirements for an application they’re really a very good way to organize and communicate your goals.  But they’re not fun to create.  And sorry, they’re still not fun to create – even with CaseComplete.  But they’re a whole lot easier and more intuitive.  All you have to do is type in outline format.  It will help you build a dictionary of definitions, actors and requirements.  It’ll output the results into one of many Word templates (which you can customize) and the latest version will create diagrams for you.

 Tags: business users, gotomeeting, mind mapping, mockups, prototypes, software, use cases