My personal experience holds this to be true, though I’m also trying to reconcile it with another truth: Online communications are almost universally short, and take almost no time to create — especially real-time communications like IMs and synchronous chat.

Look at it from the perspective of conversation — a person who goes on and on without giving the other person a chance to respond is giving a speech — a monologue. If the listener isn’t able to respond, even if it’s just interjecting a quasi-verbal “uh-huh” every so often, it stops being a conversation. So IMs, SMS and other forms of text chat are much more similar to verbal speech than traditional written works (where the author is the only party “speaking”), thus leading to shorter lengths.

160 Characters: More Than Enough? [EOM]
Now last week’s LA Times article, “Why text messages are limited to 160 characters,” exposed some of the rationale that the creators of the SMS standard used for their 160-character text limit. By analyzing random sentences and questions, they found that 160 characters was usually enough to express complete and useful thoughts, and that postcards often topped out even lower, at 150 characters.

We can see this at work in e-mail, when people send out an ultra-short message that fits entirely in the subject line. Hence the “EOM” (End Of Message) convention you see in some places — saves people the trouble of opening an empty e-mail.

Of course, this raises the question of why use e-mail to send that message in the first place? Before Twitter and other short-form messaging services, e-mail was the only game in town (depending on your groups’ adoption of IM, that might also have been an option, though sending out an IM usually indicates the desire to start a conversation).

Showing vs. Growing in Communication
Anyway, suitability of a messaging medium is pretty dependent on personality and personal preference, in addition to any objective measures of length, reliability, synchronicity, presence, etc., so I’ll just end this with a few additional, partially-baked thoughts on length & communication:

* On the writing side, it’s easier to start long and then refine your way down to short as needed. Ideally, you want to be as concise as you can be, while still conveying the information you need, to prevent excessive back-and-forth communication. If you need to iterate and go back and forth, have a conversation.

* On the speaking side, it’s better to start short — if the listener wants to get more detail, they can ask for more. It’s a more useful skill for a speaker to be able to boil something down to its core, instead of blathering on to someone who isn’t interested in hearing the detail.

Twitter is kind of a funny beast in this regard, because it’s both public messaging (chat, or chat-like) and microblogging (which is more of a publishing experience). This crossing of communication cultures may be why Twitter evokes such strong feelings from lovers and haters.

Anyway, whether you’re a long-former or a short-former, please leave a comment below.

We have been recognized for this and we not just talking “happy about it and cheering in our cubicle” proud, but like “bouncing off the walls, giving hi-fives to complete strangers” proud.

This is all because you like us, you really, really like us.

We have been notified that Network Solutions is a finalist for the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) 2008 Excellence in New Communications Awards program. Our entry is in the ‘Online Reputation Management’ category.

What this basically means to the non-PR buzzword people (which is about 99.98% of you) is that not only have we provided a resource for our current and future customers, we have used this blog and social media services like Twitter to communicate with people about issues that are crucial to their use of Network Solutions as your service provider. When it comes to reputation management in today’s environment, bad rumors or news can circulate fast so there must be a way to quickly communicate news and/or responses to customers.

In 2008, Roy Dunbar took the helm as CEO of Network Solutions and put a premium on communicating more clearly and openly with stakeholders.

As a result, the social media team at Network Solutions was given the important task of building a bridge with an ever-growing net-savvy audience is an important goal. A plan has been put into place to communicate with customers & work towards changing this perception. This is being accomplished in a number of ways including providing excellent customer service on Twitter & elsewhere on the web.

Society for New Communications Research is dedicated to creating a bridge between the academic and theoretical pursuit of these topics and the pragmatic implementation of new media and communications tools and methodologies. They offer research, education, events & information on best practices.

The Society’s Symposium & Awards Gala will be held on Friday, November 14th at the Hotel Marlowe in Cambridge, MA. This event will feature the presentation of the Society’s Fellows’ latest research projects and winning case studies from around the world through the Society’s awards program. Attendees will hear about the latest research on new media and communications, social media, ICT and mobile media. Later that evening, the Society will hold a gala dinner to honor the winners of the 2008 Excellence in New Communications Awards. Each year SNCR presents these prestigious awards to honor corporations, governmental and nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, media outlets, and individuals who are innovating the use of social media, ICT, mobile media, online communities and virtual worlds and collaborative technologies in the areas of business, media, and professional communications, including advertising, marketing, public relations and corporate communications, as well as entertainment, education, politics, and social initiatives. In addition, the SNCR Fellows will honor their choices for the SNCR Visionary of the Year, Innovator of the Year and Brand of the Year.

Detailed program agenda information & online registration is available at: http://sncr.org/symposium08/