“One inbox to rule them all, one inbox to find them”…oh, sorry was channeling a little Tolkien. Consolidation for integrated management is still only a dream. I personally struggle with this a lot just with multiple email accounts and the sheer volume of email in general. I have found that there are a few decent ways to address email but beyond email is no-mans land today. Facebook recently has made some statements about becoming the “one” inbox but it has a long way to go to get there and a difficult task of convincing enterprise IT that it should be used as a business tool (if it should). … The mobile device might offer the best vehicle to drive an integrated comm/collab approach, it’s already making it easier to use many of the tools and of course in real time, all the time and in my pocket. I guess I’m just dreaming of a uber aggregator that could pull in all of the different streams and communications methods into one manageable “inbox”…
Interesting piece on Communication and collaboration in a Social Business World. I am not as pessimistic as Michael Fauscette. In a business environment I don’t belive in Facebook either. But I believe that concepts like the Activity Streams defined in the Project Vulcan (and as API available on Greenhouse) are at least a reasonable vision – hopefully more.