Let’s face facts: E-mail just sucks as a business communications tool.

Way too many people get copied on way too many irrelevant messages. It’s a distraction. Context gets lost. Monstrous file attachments hog valuable server space and bandwidth. And some employees (typically the ones without backbone) use e-mail as a crutch to make their voices heard or send out commands to their fiefdoms, when face-to-face would be more effective.

Today in the Des Moines Register, we were mentioned in an article about the use of social networking within the workplace as an alternative to e-mail. (Except they left out our company name, Lava Row.) Lots of organizations are creating small networks within Twitter to improve communication and collaboration, and — even better — they’re getting it done quicker. BusinessWeek recently featured a Twitter vs. e-mail debate, which we encourage everyone to check out.

Google just acquired Jaiku (a web-based app similar to Twitter) and we highly suspect they’ll be mashing it into their office productivity suite soon. So, what creative things have you done in your office to improve communication?

Apparently NBC’s Today Show is now Twittering.

Yesterday I received a notice that the Twitter user Todayshow was following my feed, which is a gentle way of asking “Hey, can you follow my feed, too?” This is a great example of a large organization that wants to leverage Twitter to promote what they’re up to, but hasn’t quite grasped how to do it properly.

Instead of accusing the Today Show of social network corporate invasion, I thought I’d offer up some advice on how to improve their stream. (This can apply to any organization interested in using Twitter.)

1.) Don’t just force your blog’s RSS feeds into your stream. The (insert post title) and (insert url) tweets quickly become non-human, boring and expected. This makes it seem like you’re only using Twitter as a way to auto-syndicate your blog’s content, and that’s not the stuff Twitter users are into. Twitter-ers like conversation.

2.) Keep the tweets under 140 characters. For instance, we don’t know what this means: “Super Shea and Marvelous Mercer: This morning, Meredith interviewed a very inspirational young woman…” If you want us to tune in or watch your online video content, tell us why she’s inspirational and why we should care in less than 140.

3.) Introduce behind-the-scenes stuff and quirky antecdotes. Tell us what Al Roker is doing right now. Does he drink the office coffee or does he bring his own? What’s Willard Scott’s dressing room like? Convince Matt Lauer to personally type a message. Give your Twitter friends some unique stuff that doesn’t exist in your other communication channels.

4.) Try to keep the tweetcount manageable for followers: Between five and ten per day, please. Only Scoble can get away with more.

5.) Consider the Twitter demographics: They are much more likely to consume technology news, so push tech content in your feed.

To sum up, social mediums must be utilized properly in order to be effective. Signing off.

At SxSW 2007, the most talked-about (and criticized) new social web app was Twitter: a stream of random thoughtblurbs shared among friends and strangers, fed via IMs and text messages. Think of it as your syndicated consciousness (in 140 characters or less), predicated on the question “What are you doing?”

Everyone in attendance was perversely addicted to this little ajax-y creature, while at the same time grumbling about how there was no relevant way to leverage it in the marketing and branding worlds. Stephen Colbert is one of the best examples of good Twittering. We’re also fans of Fake Condi Rice. (Oh, and here’s my attempt.)

So we’ve gone from blogging (sharing thoughts from a desktop) to this mobile mini-blogging concept. How long before we’re able to subscribe to a person’s actual thoughts via RSS, generated and broadcasted from an implanted WiFi brain device?