The two best alternatives to Twitter as a presentation backchannel

Note: This post was updated on 30 October to reflect TodaysMeet introducing Twitter integration.

The advent of the backchannel is a tremendous opportunity for presenters. The backchannel is an online conversation that takes place at the same time as people are talking live. Audience participation didn’t use to scale easily beyond a small group. Now, the backchannel allows every audience member, whatever the size of the group, to be an active participant. However, if you plan to use a backchannel proactively in your presentation, it may be better to use a backchannel tool other than Twitter. This is because:

1. Twitter users won’t have to be concerned about overwhelming their followers with a series of presentation-specific tweets.
2. Anybody can access and contribute to the backchannel without having to register.

That makes the backchannel more inclusive – no Twitter-divide – and allows the backchannel to become a lot more intimate amongst conference attendees.

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