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Voice vs. Video

A few weeks back, Dave Michels posted a piece here urging readers to, as the title put it, "Embrace Video." "I'm increasingly annoyed with audio- only communications," Dave wrote. "I realize now that it's time to stop hanging on to the old and embrace video.

"Do not make the mistake of regarding audio and video simply as alternative forms of communication that will be sustained equally," Dave went on to argue. "Audio-only communications will become awkward and quaint, like radio dramas are alongside modern-world movies and television shows. Video simply creates more intuitive and meaningful engagement than audio can alone."

Fast-forward to the announcement by industry luminary Ray Ozzie of his new startup, Talko, an iPhone-based app that's all about voice. In his superb analysis of the Talko announcement, analyst Matt Krebs of Kelcor writes that Talko addresses a fundamental misconception. "Many vendor companies seem to work from the assumption that voice is good but video is better. I don't think this logic always holds," Matt writes. "Not everyone wants to use video. Even though, perhaps, it is exciting that we can do live video, in practice many people still hesitate to jump on a live video call.

"Video engages us in something near personal contact. It is powerful and brings affective cues to important conversations. However, much of our personal and work life--especially much in between--does not require the level of interaction that video provides."

You couldn't get two more diametrically opposed positions. I've got to say that I come down more on the side of Matt Krebs and the philosophy of Talko: Voice communications isn't just video waiting to happen. It's sometimes the right medium.

The key, I think, is Matt's recognition that we don't always want to select the most intensively-engaging format. Especially for business communications, we want what's most efficient. Remember how, when voice was the only real-time medium, we used to call people and hope to get their voice mail so we could just tell them what we wanted to tell them? We didn't want engagement. We wanted efficiency.

Often we want, frankly, to multi-task, and that's easier to do if you're not being watched. Of course, this is exactly the argument that proponents make in favor of video: People will pay attention in the meetings.

We all multi-task during audio conference calls; and we all multi-task much less during video calls. Sometimes, we're pleasantly surprised by how much we get out of a meeting when we're actually forced to pay attention because we're on video. But that doesn't mean that the highest level of engagement is always necessary in every meeting.

Talko's ambitious goal is to combine the inherent efficiencies of voice communications with the richness of context, to provide users with an even more efficient experience. Its "ping-or-ring" feature lets the caller be less intrusive, as do the features that provide callers with information that's relevant to the decision about how (or even whether) to contact the person they're trying to reach.

To me, the future is going to be less about whether you can see the person you're talking to at all times, and more about whether you can customize every interaction to suit whatever it is you're trying to accomplish--which means you have to be able to choose the most desirable medium, time, features/functions, and to do so on the fly, via a user interface that makes the call initiation process intuitive, rather than an exercise in checking off boxes and making tons of choices each time, before you can even begin.

Talko's getting a lot of people excited about the potential for accomplishing this future state. Let's see if it drives the enterprise vendors to raise their game.

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