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Isn't The Internet for Communication?
(Article Contributed By Dino - Posted on May 07th, 2008)
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Have you heard? There’s this incredible device known as the “telephone” that let’s you talk to people as if you’re right there with them! It’s amazing!
/sarcasm off
Okay, maybe that wasn’t the best introduction to an article I’ve written, but it’s what I feel like repeating to every single webmaster I know right now, and hence the reason for today’s topic. What prompted this? Well, let’s just say I for one am fed up with the bad rap that some designers are giving the rest of us hard-working professionals.
This has been going on for some time in fact. I bitch and moan about the outsourcers at every available opportunity, and I will admit I owe a great deal of my client base to their ineptitude over the past few years. However, I owe some western designers (for want of a better term) a lot more. Throughout the past few years there’s been some designer-related drama in the business that has permanently soured many program owner’s opinions of us, and I’m here to set the record straight, once and for all.
Actually, this could be used for any sub-section of the online adult industry, or just about any business or marketplace in the world. There’s always a few who spoil it for the many, but in a business such as ours that is conducted entirely online, there are additional complicating factors.
One of those is our method of communication, and hence the opening sentence of this article.
We rely almost entirely on IM (instant messaging) and email for our communication. Webmaster boards are a kind of central hub, but you can equate them to an online “bar,” where everyone meets for a beer or two after work. The real communication; the person-to-person stuff goes on with either IM or email.
This causes problems. When two people, a client and a designer (for instance) get together on a project, the client wants to get across their vision of the finished product. At the same time, the designer has to convey the limitations of the budget, timescale and so on to the client. Doing this with text is extremely difficult and frequently ends up with unhappy clients or run-overs on deadlines.
While the phone isn’t much better, it’s a lot better than using pure text. It’s a lot easier to explain something using the spoken word than with text on a screen.
This is just one problem that we in the online business face. The main one, the one that really has hurt a lot of designers, programmers and other service providers over the past few years is one of availability – or lack of it.
ICQ isn’t the most stable IM system around. In fact, since AOL/Time Warner bought out the company, the system has gotten progressively worse as the years tick on. Messages do not get through, you get dropped from the network at the most inconvenient times and so on.
Emails can get lost. Yes, it happens and it happens more frequently than you might care to admit. Even large, multi-million dollar corporations lose emails, so a single-user business is probably no better off than a company that can afford to spend a few hundred thou’ on their mail servers.
The point I’m trying to get across is this; mistakes in communication happen when you rely on pure electronic means of contact.
There’s a thread right now on one of the boards that illustrates this perfectly; a client who’s super-pissed that he’s not been able to get in contact with his designer for days, yet the designer in question produces evidence of attempted communication via email and ICQ.
Amongst the side-taking and general worthless posts, one point of view stands out; why didn’t either of them attempt to contact the other via phone before making a public spectacle of their situation?.
Again, why the reliance on electronic means with no backup?
I have no idea. Maybe one side or the other wises to keep their private details (such as real name) out of the deal, although why anyone who’s business is legit and above board would want to do this is beyond me. If you need to hide, you shouldn’t be working with porn. Period.
If you’re that worried about it, get a damn Vonage or Skype phone. You can have a number anywhere in the U.S that you want. You could be sat in California while your new business phone number has a New York area code. Such are the wonders of modern VoIP (Voice over IP) technology.
The bottom line is that every time something like this hits the boards (and it does with frightening regularity), it puts the rest of us in a bad light. It gets to the point that the rest of us are cast in the same mold as the thread starters and subjects, and everyone suffers.
We work online. We do business online. Take your business seriously and start using a little real-world communication and avoid embarrassing problems. It’s a lot harder to ignore a phone call or a mailed invoice than an ICQ or email.
Till tomorrow, pimps!
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