Availability Management
by Crystal Williams
This might well be a topic that’s been beaten to death, but I’ve been thinking lately about the new ways in which we’re managing in a hyper-connected culture. It hit me yesterday while I was waiting for my huevos rancheros that I wanted to “dm” someone through foursquare. Someone whose number I think I actually have in my phone, and whose email I could surely obtain in seconds. So, why the hell would I want to do that?
Context.
We are building a system of unspoken (though possibly over blogged, sorry) rules around these services. When is it appropriate to publicize your activity through twitter, through foursquare, through facebook? Where are the subtle differences between your facebook friends, your twitter follows, your LinkedIn contacts, and your foursquare connections?
We are starting to do some subtle filtering, not through sub-groups on any of these services, but by the services themselves. (Though I do know several people with secret, private twitter and facebook accounts for this reason) Where this gets really interesting to me is around availability management. In other words, how to give people the appropriate access to you, by varying levels of information sharing and enabling direct contact, and more so, how to revoke that?
I’ll admit, I text like a teenage girl. If I had been born 15 years later, it would have been my cell phone bill that got me in trouble instead of the BBS changes on the phone bill. Same impulse.
Texting is often my primary form of communication with friends, family, and coworkers, and those who know me well know that a phone call often can’t be answered, I loathe voicemail, and emails get buried quickly. However, I have this little device in my hand or on my person at all times, and if I’ve given you access, you can make it buzz at me – and you’ll usually get a brief, but immediate response. That’s a lot of access to give someone. It’s the universal bypass.
So like many of you, I don’t hand out those digits all over the internet. (Though I’m still deathly curious – does anyone still get unwanted phone calls from strangers, not telemarketers, but people who want access to you for something specific? It might just be the bubble I’ve been in, but first (personal, not business) contact through phone calls is starting to seem very foreign)
However, I essentially HAVE given that access over to the 847 folks I’m following on twitter, who have the ability to reach out and ping me immediately. And judging by my 3,665 direct messages, I use this method *a lot*.
I believe two factors come into play here:
1) Courtesy
2) Revocation
Courtesy
As for courtesy, we are unlikely to send a text message out of the blue to someone who do not have a close connection with. We know for sure that this is invasive. We know how they will receive this message and that, if you are not in their contacts list already, you will show up as a phone number. It lacks context. It lacks an immediate link to qualify you and your identity. It can be jarring.
There is a plausible deniability to direct messages. Perhaps the person you’re sending to does not take dms as text messages. Perhaps they will only see this in a desktop client or on email or by manually checking the page. You are assuring that you are communicating with them only in a manner in which they have (generally but explicitly) allowed. You are also giving them the space to take more time answering, since you cannot know how quickly they have received this message.
Revocation
Ok, here’s the interesting one for me. Once someone has your number, they have it. You cannot turn off their ability to contact you with it, short of blocking them or changing numbers. There is no revocation for ‘direct’ contact.
I have complete revocation powers with services-based contacts, and it only requires changing settings on my management layer with the service, not to my endpoint (my phone number). If I wanted to disassociate my phone completely from twitter, I could. If I wanted to just stop receiving direct messages as text messages, I could. And I have simple, rapid control over exactly who can contact me directly from it, which can be revoked and reinstated at will (though will probably cause some confusion).
So, we’re filtering and adding context to our communications by exchanging mobile services info instead of phone numbers, facebook profiles instead of emails. The privacy, security, and identity implications of this would be an entire other post, but as a concept, I like this. We NEED these filters as we blow Dunbar’s number out of the water by an order of magnitude.
The interesting question is how we adapt this and expand the idea in other services. If services develop their products with the concepts of context and revocation in mind, what will they do differently? Some have already done this (remember the “ex-girlfriend bug” in Dodgeball?) Why doesn’t anything now have quite the same way to silently manage who gets your updates?
So how ’bout it, foursquare, can I have a way to privately message from mobile the exact group of people I’ve identified as my ‘trusted, know-in-person, don’t mind knowing my physical whereabouts, but only while we’re in the same city’ group? I’m sure we’ll figure out a reason to need that soon.
