Collaborative and Distance Communication Platforms and Tools

In today’s society the idea of going an entire day without having a way to communicate other than face to face would have a person go insane. How can you blame them though? With how fast paced the world is needing a constant connection to everything is important. There are many distance communication platforms out there and the two I’m going to talk about are Oovoo and SnapChat.

I bet a vast of amount of the readers have not heard of Oovoo before so I will give a little history. Oovoo is a video chat service similar to Skype that began it services in the year 2007. In the first article I read it discusses how Oovoo became the teenager’s favorite way to video chat. I actually can agree with that statement. I say that because Oovoo was the first form of video chatting I did when the chat first went live. One of the biggest benefits I found was during that time Oovoo and skype were somewhat competing and Oovoo offered free conference calls with up to six people in a party and 12 if you had a subscription. In the article it talks about how Oovoo was never trying to target a young audience rather the company solely wanted to provide quality service to anyone. It caught on with teenagers because of the features that make it more fun to use. Now the company is ranked in the top twenty on the technology brands on FaceBook.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/elizabethwoyke/2012/02/01/how-oovoo-became-teenagers-favorite-way-to-video-chat/

The next platform is SnapChat. Ever since this photo and video sharing app surfaced I have been hooked.  I like to think of this company as the future “walkie-talkie” form of communication. I say that because to me the app symbolizes a walkie-talkie. Think about it, a person can have a full-on conversation with another person without ever having to directly seeing them. In the article I read it discusses why kids love to use SnapChat and the overall consensus came down to because it is not FaceBook. SnapChat has widely been known as the “sexting” app but only a small quantity of pictures and videos are related to that subject. One of the big reasons why people love the app so much is the ability to control how long a person can see your images and on top of that everything gets deleted after the time limit has expired. Having control over this form of media is It is a “trend worth following because it runs counter to the ways most tech companies are trying to monetize social media.” The idea that people have control of their data is considered to be new and for FaceBook it is at odds with its underlying paradigm. Since the users are in control SnapChat can keep up with the rate of change kids go through in social media.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2012/12/19/wait-a-minute-facebook-the-kids-like-snapchat-because-its-not-facebook/