One of the biggest challenges that will face many workers who are not just working from no fixed office, but working and connecting with others in different states and countries is going to be communication. Being able to pic up the phone and call someone who lives half way around the world is not always the easiest or cheapest option.
To combat this potential problem, more and more people are turning to alternative means of communication. Options like social networking sites, chat applications and other types of websites and applications that help enable communication. Sites like Twitter, can help with small quick updates, and linkedin can help with connecting you with business associates worldwide, while still sites like facebook can help to allow connecting to a higher level in chat, updates, and messaging.
The primary advantage in using these sites over things like email, or telephone, is especially when covering multiple time zones, you can have more flexibility. Often email is harder to access, while you can share a real time conversation on twitter or facebook, reply from multiple devices, such as phones, PDA’s, internet cafe’s and some others. Which is really what makes communicating with these types of sites makes it easier to connect then email.
TWITTER – Good for quick updates, maybe project updates, with your team. Private is available so that only the choosen people (eg collegues or team members) can see what you are updating.
FACEBOOK – While twitter is a good option, you are limited to the length of your message, where facebook allows you to send messages between multiple people, and keeps things in a time line order, additionally a chat option is available, which can immediately show who is online and who isn’t.
If you do happen to want to expand your communication but don’t want to add large amounts to your phone bill calling around the world. An option my be Skype, or other similar VOIP calling software. This lets you connect via phone over an internet connection to anyone with the same connection for free, or with a standard phone service for a small fee, often much lower then a standard phone service.