Email persists until deleted, and appears in a time-based sequence. It is the dominant technology for corporate digital communication. But there are roles for media which provide a different attentional context.

Think of all those emails that you were ‘going to get around to dealing with’, that were requests for help from people you don’t work closely with, but which ended up ignored becuase they scrolled off your screen as more urgent or immediate messages streamed in after them. Compare to a news ticker sitting at the top of your screen, with requetss for help intermixed with feed from news services to which you subscribe. Such communcations share an important characteristic — they are items you can deal with in your own time, which exist in a different temporal context to instant messages or emails, which anticipate iimmediate attention and response. Decent tickers support the concept of ‘time to live’ — ticker messages scroll past, constantly updated, until they expire. Until then, they are there, in your peripheral attentional field, waiting for you to choose to read, digest and respond to them, while still remaining, importantly, In Your Face.