Brian Hogg

I’m far from perfect in my business methods,  but one thing I’ve tried to do is maintain timely communication.  Nothing is more frustrating to me than sending an e-mail or leaving a voice mail and not hearing anything for several days, and I don’t want to cause that frustration for someone else.

There’s a few reasons I can think of that someone would intentionally delay replying to a message:

Don’t have all the information at hand
Maybe you’re waiting on a little piece of information before replying even though you have most of what the other person needs, or maybe you’re not exactly sure what the solution to a problem that’s being experienced is.  Either way, sending a quick message of acknowledgement will calm nerves and let the other person know you’re on it.

Avoidance
You knew this message would come and you know they won’t like your reply.  They’re order is delayed, or something has been lost and can’t be replaced in a timely manner.  Regardless, delaying a reply to avoid the situation can only make things worse.

Exerting Control
Not replying right away, or at all, could be a way of showing that you have more power than the other person.  Replying could show that even though you have limited time you still reliably engage with employees and clients - improving your image and making sure you’re in the loop.

Procrastination
You read or hear a message and know you need to reply to it.  You probably even think of what the reply will be.  But you don’t send the message.  By procrastinating, you waste a ton of time re-thinking about the situation or worse never getting it off your mind when you’re trying to focus on other more important tasks.  If it takes less than two minutes, why not just reply to it now?

I think clients really do appreciate fast replies, even if the communication isn’t 100% perfect.  You’ll be known as someone they can go to when they have a question that needs answering, have a problem that needs to be solved, or need an opinion about a potential new and exciting project (that you can then be chosen to work on!).

Or maybe there’s an even better way to show clients you care?

Well, I got a bit head of myself thinking that Facebook opening status updates in the API would spell the end of twitter.  Not that I thought the Twitter community could be dispanded by this, but perhaps a twitter clone or something resembling it could be built on top of the Facebook platform.

So I go and register fbtwitter.com, then get to work on reading the API and doing some tests using the Facebook developer page.  I promptly hit a brick wall:

1. You can’t seem to see the status updates of others unless they’re your friend
2. Multiple people can have the same name, so unless fbtwitter.com let’s people pick and locally store yet another username, getting someones attention with @”Brian Hogg” would go to any number of Facebook users
3. Thanks to 1., you can’t get a public timeline of all status updates, so trying to see trends in what people are talking about right now goes out the window.

Not to mention that adding people you don’t know is a big faux pas on Facebook, while completely normal (and sometimes annoying) on Twitter.  On the plus side, you could do things like Direct Messages relatively easily.

With the tools that surround Twitter, and the openness of their API, I can’t see Facebook destroying Twitter.  Ever. Agreed?

Update: Facebook’s new design is quite Twitter-esque, but still a closed circle of updates…