I've been thinking about types of communication lately. "Types" is a bit too vague, but I'm not sure of the proper nomenclature for the concept I'm reaching for. I've been thinking of a series of matrices that display some of the following characteristics:
- Audience size (self, individual, small group, large group, etc.)
- Message purpose (inform, request, entertain, etc.)
- Message initiation trigger ("push" vs. "pull", manual vs. automatic)
- Universality of format (open vs. proprietary requirements to receive message)
- Complexity of message encoding (low->high)
- Need for Immediacy (low->high)
- Need for Durability (low->high)
- etc, etc, etc...
Email has taken off as a messaging medium because it is fairly easy to send messages with multiple purposes to audiences of varying sizes. Immediacy and Durability are dependent upon the habits of the recipient (your urgent email message means nothing to me if I don't check my email, and that serial number the software company sent me when I registered is useless if I automatically delete messages after a given period of time). Much of the current frustration with the medium comes from the ease with which messages that have not been requested (definitely on the "push" side) find their way into the average user's email inbox.
I believe that weblogs are growing in popularity because they lower the complexity of encoding a message and, at the same time, offer multiple (simultaneous/transparent) channels of output (HTML, RSS, etc.). They also provide similar immediacy to email (if RSS news aggregators are a part of the mix) and greatly increased durability of the message (especially when the software used includes built-in search capabilities).
I am very interested in moving much of the messaging that I have traditionally done in my email tool into my weblog environment. What if I could specify a recipient (anywhere on the continuum from individual to group) as a category, and the preferences for outputting that category included an option to send the message via email or instant messaging rather than (or in addition to) HTML or RSS? This is particularly powerful if I can de-select the primary or default category (ala Radio) because there will be times that I want to route a message to only one channel. The database behind this messaging powerhouse doesn't care what channel each message goes through. It faithfully catalogs each entry so that later I can pull up references easily.
This type of functionality would mirror, for the encoding side of my messaging world, the exciting potential of projects such as DynamicObjects' Spaces or OSAF's Chandler. These tools propose to gather all of your incoming streams of communication and present them to you within a single interface that adds value through automatic association of related messages. I think the concept of weblogs as messaging tools has just as much exciting potential--especially (for me) if I can more tightly integrate all of my messaging needs into them.
5:20:38 PM 
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