Reach is easy to understand. It simply means the number of people -- at home or at work -- exchanging information. The definition of richness of information is a bit more complex. It concerns six aspects of information:

• Bandwidth, or the amount of information that can be moved from sender to receiver in a given time: stock quotes are narrowband; a feature film is broadband.

• The degree to which the information can be customized: an advertisement on television is far less customized than a personal sales pitch but reaches many more people.

• Interactivity: dialogue is possible for a small group, but to reach millions the message must be a monologue.

• Reliability: information is reliable when exchanged among a small group of trusted individuals but is not when it is circulating among a large group of strangers.

• Security: managers share highly sensitive business information only in closed-door meetings, but they will disseminate less sensitive information to a wider audience.

• Currency: on Wall Street, where seconds count, a few market makers have instantaneous quotes, a larger group of financial institutions receive quotes with a three- to fifteen-minute delay, and most retail investors receive quotes with at least a 15-minute delay.

Evans and Wurster,
Blown to Bits,
pg. 25