Not all conversations are friendly. Real life conversations can be confrontational, angry, and unpleasant. We often talk with someone who has an opinion different from ours. At the end of the conversation we may have changed each other's minds, or we may come away convinced we never want to talk to that person again.

Virtual conversations are no different, they're just a lot bigger. Anyone can read the conversation and add their own take on the topic by commenting, or they can explain their feelings in a post on their own blog. These conversations are worth having because they put ideas on the virtual table to discuss, and when ideas are being discussed, good things can happen.

An example from today: Mahalo CEO and founder Jason Calacanis wrote a post on his blog on Friday titled "How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)." Duncan Riley posted a response on TechCrunch shortly thereafter titled "Calacanis fires people who have a life." I'm not going to go in the details of the conversation itself, you can do that by clicking on the links if you haven't already read them.

This real time "virtual conversation" between Calacanis and Riley, made up of their original blog posts, plus many comments on both writers' posts and many other blogs weighing in on the subject, wasn't possible a few years ago. The widespread development and acceptance of social media technology like blogs has created these large-scale conversations. The conversation - and conflict - between the two men was significant enough to make the top of Techmeme's headline list on Friday evening.

I believe it's a positive thing to be able to have a conversation discussing workplace expectations and environment. In the past, someone might have written an article for a magazine on the subject, then people would discuss it around the water cooler or perhaps write a letter to the editor for the next issue (do you read letters to the editor?). Now, however, we have a full-blown debate going on over the pros and cons of what Jason Calacanis believes is the ideal workplace versus what Duncan Riley thinks that workplace should be. It's a bit chaotic, but it does drive a topic to the front of our collective priority list, at least for a short time. In the end, maybe we end up changing each other's minds a little - or we may decide never to read anything either of them writes ever again.

It's an exciting time to be involved with the technologies that make this virtual conversation possible. Employees, customers and prospects are all looking for businesses and organizations that are participating in this upheaval of personal communications. It's time to ask: Am I part of the conversation?

Photo credit: Marcello eM, Poland, sxc.hu