Video messaging: Every mail a pitch for attention

EyeJot's David Geller sent me an email that grabbed my attention the other day. In it, a video image of Geller told me about the company's new attachment features and he pointed below the video frame to an attached file. This is enterprise gold, because in the increasingly confusing datascape that is a company the image of another person can galvanize our attention.

The video message also works as a "PR pitch," because video can't support the impersonal mail-merge that simply inserts a name and sends the same message to thousands of journalists and bloggers. Video within the enterprise has the added benefit of telling the recipient at a glance who is asking for their attention—the ability to do attachments, which EyeJot just added this past week, links that visual context to a call for action, whether it is "read this document," "edit this document" or whatever the requested action may be.

That the whole service exists in the cloud makes this an intriguing supplement to the standard enterprise messaging system, which tends to close the channels of communication behind the firewall. I am not sure that EyeJot will not need to ship a device that sits behind the firewall to accommodate IT security concerns, but the current design supports what I believe is essential to the success of the enterprise: permeability.

It's critically important that IT recognize that every message contends for the reader's attention and that within the enterprise an image of the boss or a trusted colleague is going to have more impact than a text message. Tools like this help us focus on what matters to our companies.