CraftingMessagesforElectronicMedia文件材料.ppt

For both routine communication and exchanges during online meetings, IM is now widely used throughout the business world and is beginning to replace e-mail for internal communication in many companies. Business-grade IM systems offer a range of capabilities, including basic chat, presence awareness (the ability to quickly see which people are at their desks and available to IM), remote display of documents, video capabilities, remote control of other computers, automated newsfeeds from blogs and websites, and automated bot capabilities. Although they perform the similar function of nearly instantaneous communication between devices, IM is primarily a computer-based technology, whereas text messaging is primarily a phone-based technology. (Of course, as often happens, continuing innovation blurs the lines between technologies, and now you can send a text message to a phone from your computer and so on.) Text messaging is beginning to find applications in business. In addition to person-to-person communication between colleagues, text messaging is taking off in such areas as marketing (alerting customers about new sale prices, for example) and entertainment (such as letting viewers predict the outcome of sporting events or place votes on reality TV programs). Because IM is currently more versatile and widely used in business than text messaging, the next several slides will focus on IM. The benefits of IM in meetings (and in the workplace in general) include its rapid response to urgent messages, lower cost than both phone calls and e-mail, ability to mimic conversation more closely than e-mail, and availability on a wide range of devices from PCs to phones to PDAs. Of course, wherever technology goes, trouble seems to follow. The potential drawbacks of IM include security problems (the risks of computer viruses and the worry that sensitive messages might be intercepted by outsiders), the need for user authentication (making sure that online correspondents are