Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Collaborative and Distance Communication Platforms

Skype. Facetime. Google Hang-out. What do these three things have in common? Well, they are all collaborative and distance communication platforms.

In my experience using these platforms, Facetime is my go to. I’ve tried using Skype. Skype is literally my worst nightmare. The buffering and the account set up and the glitches makes me want to stab my eyes out with my fingernails. Dramatic, but true. And not to mention that you have to pay for services that Facetime already lets you do. Bleh.  As I was researching though, I realized that this communication tool has a lot more than just video calls. You can text, send images, and send video messages all within the app. Which is cool I guess… but not cool enough for me to want to use it over using Facetime.

Another option other than Skype is Google Hang-Out. I have only ever tried this once… back in the day when I was a senior in high school. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty cool. I could chat with my friends that lived an hour away and we could see every single one of our faces! At the same time. That was monumental. There still were a few glitches though. The main thing that turned me off to Google Hang-Out was how confusing the setup and maintenance was of the site. If I were to get on today and try and figure out how to navigate that now, I would have zero idea… and I feel like it would be hard to find resources to help me.


And then came Facetime. What a glorious sentence that is. I don’t want to say that I’m an apple snob but like… I probably am. Facetime might not have the same capabilities as Skype and Google Hang-Out does when it comes to group communication, but it is SO much more user friendly. And simple. And accessible. That is what I think trumps every other communication platform in the tech world these days; accessibility and quality of service. 

1 comment:

  1. You posted about a couple of platforms I am familiar with, but I have never tried or even know anything about Google Hangout. I have only used Skype a couple of times, but it was successful and served its purpose for my needs. I do like facetime as do you, and because it is a newer program, it may have fewer issues than older programs. Thanks for comparing the three--it made for a good read.

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