I was asked today how I would compare Wikis, Blogs, and Persistent Chat. Then, once that comparison was done, throw SharePoint into the mix. In the end, the ultimate question was, if someone has SharePoint, which in v2007 includes Wikis and Blogs, then why would they need Persistent Chat?
My first answer to the question was simple: conversations in the workplace exist with the purpose of achieving an outcome. The outcome is typically an artifact of some kind, where the artifact can be a document, a proposal, a set of milestones, an action plan, etc. In historical terms, these conversations always took place in person or on the phone. With the addition of Unified Communications solutions, we are now able to add video, video conferencing, live meetings, etc. to the mix of conversations. But in the end, the goals don't change: someone needs to get something done and therefore they need to converse in order to achieve this goal. So, the conversation is something real-time, like IM or Persistent Chat, whereas the artifact is something that is published, like a Blog or Wiki entry.
Simply put, there is conversational of collaboration and there is document-based collaboration. Conversational collaboration comes in the form of person-to-person conversations, voice (telephony, VOIP), and video conversations, in addition to text-based conversations in the form of email, IM, and Persistent Chat. Document-based collaboration includes Blogs, Wikis, Intranets, and Document Management systems. Conversational collaboration is useful for arriving at ideas and conclusions. Document based collaboration is useful for documenting those ideas and conclusions.
Another way to classify these collaboration tools is to consider the following graph:
On one axis (Y) collaboration tools can be classified by how dynamic they are. On the other axis (X) they can be classified by the level of persistence within the solution. Below is how I would classify these collaboration solutions:
Person-to-person, voice, and video are all the most dynamic forms of collaboration, but they inherently have no persistence as there is typically no record of the conversation. IM is slightly less dynamic since people generally type slower than they talk, however IM conversations are usually not persistent.
Intranets are extremely persistent but most of their content is very static and does not frequently change. I have argued in previous blog posts that the static nature of Intranets is one of the primary reasons why the Intranet model is generally being phased out in favor of other more dynamic forms of collaboration.
Documents are more persistent since you can PDF a document and keep the contents forever. However they are also slightly more collaborative as you can exchange documents and mark edits, comments, etc. within those documents. Anyone who has been involved in a contracting process with lawyers knows what this process looks like (it is painful).
Wikis and Blogs are tough to classify in comparison to each other. However I think it is easy to say that Wikis and Blogs are more dynamic than documents even though they may or may not be as persistent as documents. On one hand Blogs are very persistent because people typically do not modify their posts after the fact. On the other hand they are not very persistent because Blog entries are typically not organized by anything other than author and old entries scroll off the page and are lost in time. Blogs are collaborative only because people can comment on posts. But this concept of commenting on posts is nowhere near as real-time and dynamic as IM, Persistent Chat, or Voice/Video. In some regard Blogs can be compared to Email since an inbox is usually one un-organized stream of incoming emails. Blogs are typically one un-organized stream-of-conscience from a particular person.
Wikis on the other hand are very dynamic since many people can change the text of an article. But in the end Wikis are typically just a shared document, where the documents are organized around topics. Someone can publish information on a topic and others can edit that content. Wikipedia is the best example of this. It is an encyclopedia that everyone edits and therefore arguably has the best content. While this is a great place to document ideas, it is not a very fluent and dynamic way to have a conversation.
Persistent Chat is as dynamic as IM since you communicate in the same was as you do in IM. Arguably it may be slightly more dynamic since it is easier to share files in Persistent Chat rooms than it is in IM (many IM solutions do not support file transfer). But Persistent Chat combines the real-time nature of IM, persistent nature of Blogs, and the topic-based nature of Wikis. So you can go to a room/channel that is based on a topic, search through archives of what was said on that topic, and then participate in the conversation of that topic in real-time. If the team in the room/channel comes to a conclusion and/or artifact, that artifact can be published to a nWiki or Blog. But in many cases it is as important to understand how you came to the decision as it is to knowing what the decision was.
Ultimately, someone might ask: If I have Blogs, Wikis, and IM, why do I need Persistent Chat? My answer would be that after reading this article the only way to have a conversation with me about it is to post a comment. Yet that is only useful for a small number of comments. An IM conversation would be better, but what if we wanted to add a 3rd party to that conversation? And what if that 3rd party wanted to be able to search through everything that was said before they joined the conversation? That is a concept that is only available through Persistent Chat.
