Open Thread: How do you Prefer to be Contacted?

As the volume of email overwhelms some people and new communication channels arise, it becomes ever more possible for people to customize and personalize their communications to their workload and temperament. But communication involves at least two people, so somehow you have to get the word out about your preferences to those who might contact you.

Web workers can announce their contact preferences online, of course. Jeremiah Owyang has cut out instant messaging in favor of the phone and email even as he ponders whether Facebook might supplant email in certain cases. Steve O’Grady is warning people not to email him while he tries to dig out after vacation. And last week Sean Bonner posted an update on his war on email, describing how he has published a preferred means of contact page that directs people to channels other than email.

Lisa Belkin tackles the issue of personalized communications in the New York Times, noting how difficult it can be to figure out how to contact someone:

Now contact means decoding the quirks of the person in question, the better to predict how to actually get your message through. And if you misread your target, it means the risk of a frosty response, or sometimes deafening silence.

Does he or she hate e-mail, letting it build up in the inbox, but quick to answer the cellphone on the first ring? Does the person refuse to carry a cellphone, but grab the office line through the Bluetooth that is literally attached to one ear? Is it solicitous or stalkerish to send an e-mail message, then leave an office message, then try the cellphone just to be sure?

How do you prefer to be contacted? By phone, email, IM, Facebook, Twitter, other? How do you get the word out?

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