Ways to communicate online

What we are going to do now is have a look at different ways to communicate online. Now, one is very one-way traffic will be to go to someone's website and you can read information. You can also go on to people's blogs and you can find information that way which can be read information but you can also communicate online as well. So we just go onto here, this is our blog, but what you can do on here is literally go onto any one of the stories and you can then communicate back to the person who has written the blog, a simple way, you write your reply in here and then the company will get back to you and you can see as it builds up, you might find there is quite a lot of feedback ends up going underneath here. So you can communicate. It is a very slow way, it is not a live way of communicating, but it is still a method of communicating online. Another way of communicating is using an online chat facility, so here is an online chat facility on one of our websites, where you can directly talk live to somebody else. Now these chat facilities normally they are on businesses, that is the key reasons for it, but a lot of other organisations have them, you can find information, there are online vet systems for help with your animals, as well as companies and organisations, lots of people use chat type systems.

The next one is video conferencing software, which are programs like Skype, Google Meet, Zoom and there are lots of others. You might have a mobile phone you use FaceTime, this is where you can live talk to someone else, you can see them, if it is a mobile device, you can flip the camera around so you can look in front of them as well as the forward. So there are lots of different providers there, now we are going to look at these in separate videos, but they are a very easy way of communicating, great for communication with friends and family and rather than just have a voice call, you can have a direct video meeting. Now, a lot of these providers also offer direct voice calls, so there is also VoIP calls, which is voice over internet protocols. All of our phone systems in our office operate in that way, so that rather than have a conventional landline that all the telephones are linked up through the internet, so it does not matter where the person is. So for example, when lockdown happened, literally all our staff had to do is unplug their telephone from the socket and plug it in at home or the whole system is based on the internet itself, so the headset goes straight into the computer. So these are for voice calls, so if you have got this type of system, there are apps and programs you are gonna have put in your computers so that wherever you are in the world, you can still answer your phone as if you are directed there.

Now, other ways of communicating can be through social media. So here is a YouTube, for example, again, it is a way of you can communicate, is a very one-way side, so you can either hear what other people are saying, but it is a method of you getting your message across as well. So if you wanted to upload a video directly onto YouTube is still a communication method. Now, one of the other very popular methods are the likes of Facebook and social media and there are lots of different social media sites you can register with; there is Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and loads and loads of others. Most of them, you would have to go through a registration process, they are usually always free and once you set up, you can then start befriending people, other people can befriend you, or you can follow people or organisations and they are a very good way of directly chatting. A lot of them have a direct messaging system, so you can send the message straight out to somebody and then they could reply back and they also have some which you are using live chat systems, like what we spoke about for a company would have.

On the likes of Facebook, you can have a live system where you can directly chat with somebody else in the same way. So there are lots of other different methods of communicating online; there are forums where you can go on and discuss and get information and lots of others and I am sure over time, there is going to be even more added. So the internet is a very valuable tool in methods of communication and it has made the world be something that you can contact no matter where you are you can keep in contact with your friends and family.