There are lots of options available for sharing information, depending what you want to achieve through the interaction:
A one-on-one Conversation is one that only you and the person you're talking to can see. You can't add other members to a one-on-one Conversation. You might use one-on-one Conversations for private comments or questions before you share information with a larger group.
A private Conversation is one that only you can see. You might use a private Conversation to store your private notes and comments, or as a staging ground where you gather content until you're ready to share it with others.
A members-only Conversation can be seen only by the people who are explicitly added to the Conversation by other members.
A public Conversation is open enrollment; anyone who is logged in can join. While you can see posts in a public Conversation, you can't actually post anything until you've clicked the Join button to become a member.
A scoped Conversation is the most tightly controlled type of Conversation. Scoped Conversations are created under a scoping Social Object in an application that has been integrated with Oracle Social Network. When the scoping Social Object is created, a list of people is defined. Only those people are eligible to be added to Conversations about that scoping Social Object.
Note: For information about Social Objects, see Social Objects
While a Social Object's wall isn't really a Conversation, it is another place where people can exchange information. If you've joined a Social Object, you can see posts, make posts, and invite others to the wall, provided that they have a login to the same instance of Oracle Social Network that you use.
Think of a wall as a common area for the Social Object, where people who might not have access to your application can still collaborate with you on a particular Social Object. For example, suppose you want to consult with someone in Legal, who doesn't have access to the business object. All you have to do is add the Legal employee to the Social Object in question, and start your online discussion—either on the wall itself, or in a new Conversation.
What's the difference between Conversations and walls?
It might be useful to know what they have in common first: All of them are pages where you can post messages and other types of content that other members can read and reply to. All of them preserve this information so that it can be revisited anytime, anywhere.
A Conversation is an online discussion typically about a specific topic. A Conversation can have a restricted membership or be open to any person with a login to the social network.
A wall is a page associated with a business object, group, or user. All members of the object can post to a wall and read what other members have posted, so the information posted there is usually more general, such as announcements.
While walls are meant for announcements, Conversations are more like discussions. That means that new wall posts are presented at the top, to make the latest information easy to see, while new Conversation posts are at the bottom, to continue the discussion.