In one embodiment, the haptic communication may be part of a multi-modal communication. The social networking system 228 may, for example, select one or more modes of communication among text messages, audio signals and haptic communication for transmission to a user based on various factors such as availability of actuators on the user, affinity between a sending user and a receiving user, and preference of the users. Also, multiple modes of communication can be combined to transmit a message in an effective manner. For example, a message may be transmitted using a combination of audio signals, haptic output and a visual signal. To increase the efficiency of the multimodal communication, coding theory such as Huffman coding may be used to design a combination of message elements in different modes of communication.
Additional details regarding converting speech to haptic communications is described below with reference to