Cisco yesterday introduced Enterprise TV, a new video posting and viewing service for businesses. The Enterprise TV platform will allow employers and employees to create capture or play videos of things like meetings, product demonstrations or trainings.

As a YouTube fanatic I think anything involving video rocks! But as a journalist in the multimedia age, I know that video is only one form of media. And it should only be used when it’s the best avenue for getting your point across.

Employee collaboration tools are becoming increasingly popular and are also important for easy dissemination of information and materials; Enterprise TV is just another example of that. But what business owners need to understand is that video, though a huge craze right now, is still just one of many mediums.

Don’t get me wrong, video is stellar, but so are photos, graphics, text, audio, etc. Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. Sometimes a thousand words are worth every minute it takes to read them. What I’m getting at is that employee collaboration, or any (technology-based) collaboration for that matter, should be integrative and multimedia-based.

If the purpose of these tools is to help employees, then the key is being able to choose from a variety of tools to get the job done. If that’s with video…great! If that’s with graphics…great! If that’s with a 200-page memo, then sucks for you, but…great! Either way, don’t automatically jump on the video bandwagon just because it’s trendy. Find the best way to share your information and go with it.

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