Instant messaging:

Advantages:

• Messages can be recieved accuratly
• High speed of communication
• Virtual simultaneous exchange of information

Disadvantages:

• The information can be unretrieved, so if information is sent in an angry way then it cannot be stopped from gettin to the reciever.
• It is unknown the the sender if the information has successfully been recieved.

Email:

Advantages:

• email is effective in providing quick answers to yes and no, type questions. eg. Do you do international delivery?
• Email is effective in finding the right person in an organisation or company to answer your question.
• Email is good to make appointments for busy people.
• Email can distribute information quickly to many people for the time it takes to email one person.

Disadvantages:

• Email can become timeconsuming for answering complicated questions and misunderstandings can arise because cultural differences in the interpretation of certain words. The telephone, is much better for providing detailed answers or if you feel that the question is not absolutely clear.
• Email can compromise the security of an organisation because sensitive information can be easily distributed accidently or deliberately. Email should be entrusted to well trained and trusted staff members.
• Email can become impersonal or misunderstood.

VOIP/skype phones:

Advantages:

One of the biggest advantages of using VOIP is that it helps in reducing the cost by huge volumes depending on the size and business of the company. Most of companies make regular calls to other states or nations. For them, long distance telephone costs will depend on when and how long a company places a call. Frequent long distance calls, of course, will result in a higher bill. VOIP offers flat rate charge, which will allow calls at a very low cost.
Using VOIP and te right software, you can talk with multiple people anytime you want all at the same time, which makes communication easier and feasible irrespective of members being at different location. It fills in the communication gap by allowing companies to conduct online meetings from all the various locations by using added features such as web cameras for visual communication. VOIP is combination data communication and voice communication which allows easy exchange of data with people you are talking to. Messages, videos, and many other documents can be easily exchanged using VOIP.

Disadvantages:

One of the major disadvantages of VOIP is that it only works if your computer is switched on and the VOIP software is running and also the other person with whom you are trying to communicate with has the same program loaded and running on his computer.
Another major disadvantage of VOIP is the quality of the sound which can be uneven, and phone calls often have lot of delay with lot of echo. It makes conversation difficult as you find the other party constantly saying "Excuse Me"! To get lower bandwidth, the voice compression algorithms and echo cancellation requires additional processing power that makes digital phones more expensive than analog phones.

Webcomfrencing/Video calling/Video confrencing:

Video Conferencing:

Advantages:

• Fully interactive with all sites
• Costs are generally lower than satellite broadcasting

Disadvantages:

• Network lines such as ISDN may not be available at venue
• Long lead time to install ISDN or other suitable networks
• Medium to low resolution - may not be suitable for projection

Web Conferencing:

Advantages:

• Available to anyone with a computer and Internet access
• Participants may attend a meeting from their normal work stations without travel
• Lowest cost delivery

Disadvantages:

• Low resolution - low quality
• Participants may not have high quality Internet Access
• Meeting quality is based on the quality of attendee's Internet Access and computer capabilities
• Creates no sense of impact or community among participants

Chat rooms:

Advantages:

• Can communicate with anyone from anywhere in the world.

Disadvantages:

• Sometimes unreliable infromation ro "Flames" can be recieved.

Forums:

Advantages:

• You don't need a fast connection to the Internet.
• News articles don't fill up your e-mail inbox.
• Newsgroups can be searched by keyword.
• Most newsreaders are designed to thread related articles. Threading means that the original article and its responses ("RE:") are kept together, so you can follow the entire discussion.
• You can drop in and read the most recent Usenet news when you have time, since our news server automatically deletes old articles even if you haven't read them (one week or less for most Usenet newsgroups; thirty days for UBC newsgroups).
• If the newsgroup is moderated, only relevant content will be posted. All articles in a moderated newsgroup are first e-mailed to an appointed moderator, who reviews them and decides if they are suitable to be posted. The discussions therefore don't diverge from the original direction of the newsgroup, and flaming - a Usenet term for posting insulting or provocative articles - and other inappropriate commercial or junk mail postings can be controlled and monitored.

Disadvantages:

• You need a newsgroup reader program, but as we mentioned above, many Web browsers and e-mail programs come bundled with newsreader software.
• Spam, which is unsolicited junk mail such as get rich quick schemes and other propaganda, is common in newsgroups.
• It can take up to a few days for newsgroup articles to spread through the entire Internet. NOTE: UBC newsgroups are an exception: articles appear right away on the local news server, making them extremely timely for the campus community.
• Not all newsgroups are available to everyone on the Internet, so you might not reach your intended audience. For example, UBC newsgroups are only carried on the campus news servers, and therefore are only available to individuals with UBC accounts or subscriptions. Other newsgroups that have worldwide distribution may not reach everyone on the Internet because the administrator of their news server chooses not to carry them.
• You can't control who reads a newsgroup. Anyone with access to a newsgroup can read the articles and, unless it's a moderated newsgroup, respond to articles or post their own.

Blogs:

The advantages of blogs from an organizational perspective include the following:

• The consumer and citizen are potentially better informed and this can only be good for the long-term health of our societies and economies.
• Blogs have potential to help the organization develop stronger relationships and brand loyalty with its customers, as they interact with the ‘human face’ of the organization through blogs.
• Blogs, in an intranet environment, can be an excellent way of sharing knowledge within the organization.
• Blogs can be a positive way of getting feedback, and keeping your finger on the pulse, as readers react to certain pieces, suggest story ideas, etc.
• Blogs can build the profile of the writer, showcasing the organization as having talent and expertise.

The disadvantages of blogs are:

• Most people don’t have very much to say that’s interesting, and/or are unable to write down their ideas in a compelling and clear manner.
• I have often found that the people who have most time to write have least to say, and the people who have most to say don’t have enough time to write it. Thus, the real expertise within the organization lays hidden, as you get drowned in trivia.
• Like practically everything else on the Web, blogs are easy to start and hard to maintain.
• Writing coherently is one of the most difficult and time-consuming tasks for a human being to undertake. So, far from blogs being a cheap strategy, they are a very expensive one, in that they eat up time. As a result, many blogs are not updated, thus damaging rather than enhancing the reputation of the organization.
• Organizations are not democracies. The Web makes many organizations look like disorganizations, with multiple tones and opinions. Contrary to what some might think, the average customer prefers it if the organization they are about to purchase from is at least somewhat coherent.