As you already know, Google released a waterfall of 100,000 invites to the Google Wave preview over the last day or so, giving bleeding-edge early adopter and information addicts a new playground to exchange conversations in real time. After months of hibernation and anticipation, Wave's arrival has everyone's tongues wagging, as we all get an early look into Google's plans to redefine messaging, delivering a real-time platform that includes rich media and extensibility through gadgets.

Since Wave's introduction earlier this year, I have seen a number of differing ways the product has been described. From a new development platform to a suite for business collaboration or an (insert popular social service name here) killer, the guesses have ranged far and wide. Interestingly, however, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lars Rasmussen defined Wave as "a modern version of e-mail", adding that e-mail is "an old-fashioned technology". So it makes the most sense, at this point, to look at the Google Wave preview as a potential replacement or enhancement to today's e-mail systems, notably GMail.

Having received an invite to Google Wave via Denton Gentry, a Google employee who is also a frequent commenter here on this blog, I jumped into the Wave fray late last night, and found the system to be extremely stable and much faster than anticipated. For a "preview" release, Wave is very good, especially considering the complexity that is involved.


My first "wave" seemed simple enough.
Google Wave takes on traditional e-mail systems and incorporates chat-like or instant messaging technology all in one. Instead of a typical "I send you a message, you receive it and you reply" type of exchange, Wave encapsulates conversations between people and shows real-time responses in line, more like threaded comments than individual messages. If you and I are having a conversation in Wave, you see me type out my responses, typos and all, as I pound out a reply. To respond to my note, just click below the last message and extend the thread.


Almost immediately, my Wave filled up with conversation.
(Click for full-size image)
As this specific "wave" (lower case) is being updated, new waves can pop into our in boxes from anyone. Like traditional e-mail, if anybody has your address, you can be copied on a note. But Wave enables anyone to add contacts from their address book to any thread at any time. So while you may initiate one conversation, you could be dragged into another one that already has 60 entries. The good news is that Wave has a "Playback" button which enables you to watch the conversation occur, in the order it was entered, but the bad news is if you are in enough active threads, the act of watching each one can be time consuming.

Like most early discussions around new services, the vast majority of conversations are actually about the service. Just like FriendFeed-related items get liked more item on FriendFeed, and Twitter-related tweets get retweeted, last night's Wave swarm was full of conversations all about Wave. Does it work? Where are the gadgets? Who doesn't have invites, but needs them?


One active wave shows participants and nested comments.
Because of the real-time nature of Wave, I quickly found that if I engaged in one wave (lower case) and gained replies in another, the other contact might feel that I had "left" that thread. Since I can't yet be in two places at once, the real-time aspect was more like when you have multiple chat windows open in Google Chat or Facebook Chat than if you had more than one e-mail message. So staying on top of all active waves can be a tremendous challenge - one that practically promises to keep you embedded in the application until every single message is muted and all your contacts go do something else (which may never happen).

The instantaneous nature of Wave immediately makes other assumed "fast" programs seem slow. For example, adding comments to FriendFeed for a live conversation now seems slow, as it requires the entire message to be completed before being posted. In comparison, in Wave, I see you type it immediately, and can actually formulate a response as you're writing.

Google Wave, as should be no surprise, is integrated with Search. You can insert videos discovered on YouTube and photos from Picasa or other services into Wave, and make them part of any conversations. You can play back YouTube videos below text, or post new videos to those you're talking to.

But yes, as you are watching a video, more waves are crashing into your in box. While you may not get the feeling that you have hundreds of unread messages, as you do with traditional e-mail, every single wave conversation shows how many new entries have been made since you last viewed the thread. Every single wave can have dozens of new entries, depending on the number of contacts and conversation that is there.


A typical Wave "In Box" after a night's activity.
(Click for full-size image)
Meanwhile, until Google Wave is integrated into GMail or other Google services, checking your Wave becomes yet another place to go so you're not missing conversations directed your way. So for somebody like me, who has a personal e-mail address, a work e-mail address, a GMail address, and e-mail addresses for company clients, Wave is yet another inbox and place to go to check in. And the new address ([email protected]) is another place for people to send me things.

I can see how small teams may use Wave for real-time collaboration. Its nature offers an opportunity to further eliminate distance and improve information exchanges. The ability to add people on the fly to conversations is very interesting, as is the ability to ping somebody and have a 1-1 conversation in the middle of any wave, or in a dedicated side exchange. I expect the company is set to debut more widgets to further extend the platform, both bringing content into Wave and content out from Wave. For example, last night, Jesse Stay and I had an exchange where he added a Twitter gadget, but thanks to something I would consider a security bug, I was able to send a tweet on his behalf because I was engaged in the thread. (See the tweet I made here)

Wave, like many Google products, also supports keyboard shortcuts to aid in navigation. I hopefully hit J to go down and K to go back (like I do constantly in Google Reader), but found it is the space bar that you hit to go step by step. Wave is an extremely interesting platform, and I would bet that after the initial surge of curiosity, normal conversations and information exchange will eventually take over, so this initial spike may be an exception rather than the new rule. But if you're diving into this new technology, expect do be exerting a lot of energy to stay on top of it, because messaging just got accelerated.

Also see: Scobleizer: Google Wave Crashes on Beach of Overhype

See Also: Twitter Is Worth A Lot More Than $250 Million

In the Web 2.0 space, it would be extremely difficult to find a more-successful, faster-growing service than Twitter, who has carved out a significant niche for itself in the microupdates space, as people from around the world tell you what they're doing, right now, even if you didn't ask. The service has an estimated 6 million active users, and recently surpassed the 1 billion "Tweet" mark, if you count all updates. But the company hasn't yet made a buck in traditional revenues. (Although I can't claim to be privy to their books, and they just might have recognized something somewhere) Word comes this weekend, via TechCrunch and others, that Twitter is embarking on a new funding round that could see the company valued at $250 million. And while I already made the case that Twitter will get its funding, and could end up being worth a lot more than that number in short order, it is pretty easy to also poke holes in that analysis.

Quite simply, now is a very difficult time to attain a high valuation. Venture funding is dropping dramatically, and positive exits for companies are rare. Practically nobody is talking about going public, so to make money, you would have to do it the old fashioned way, through profits. And Twitter has grown its user base rapidly, but has done so on the backs of users who are used to getting something for nothing. We've already seen users revolt when Magpie launched with the possibility of inserting ads in one's tweets, and you could expect to see the user base shudder when being asked to shoulder any of the revenue themselves - so you can practically forget about monthly fees. Given that scenario, site ads and ads inserted in third party applications, like TweetDeck, would have to be one option, but an unattractive one, as the ad market itself is tailing downward.

Additionally, what Twitter does is incredibly basic. It's sole functionality is one that it is easily replicated. You can provide status updates on Facebook, on GMail, on FriendFeed, and the whole process rolls back to AOL instant Messenger, when you would set an "Away" status to say you were "At Lunch" or "In a Meeting". So that's not hard.

A recent post by Paul Buchheit of FriendFeed, called Communicating with Code, showcased a prototype offering of FriendFeed that borrowed heavily from the look and feel of Twitter. Given FriendFeed updates include those from Twitter, and then build on with additional services, it can be considered a superset, while Twitter is simply one service of many. So the barrier to entry to compete with Twitter is not that hard, leaving the company's major assets as the community and its developers.

But communities are incredibly fickle. None of Twitter's six million users were using the service five years ago, and maybe, five years from now, they will be doing something else. If people use Twitter for conversation, they can replace that with e-mail, with IM, with FriendFeed, Facebook or other social destinations. I've talked about the five stages of being an early adopter before. One of the final stages is when you grow tired of an environment, and leave, begging your followers to come along. It happens with news groups. It happens with e-mail lists, and it just might happen with social networking tools, including Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter and others.

Today, Twitter is among the hottest, fastest-growing brands out there. But no matter how you multiply its current revenue to try and guess at a market capitalization, the answer is still zero. At a time when real brick and mortar businesses are seeing their own valuations decimated, how can a virtual company with a free user base and a low barrier to competition expect to be valued so richly? Whoever does invest should exercise extreme caution.

Two integral characteristics to the Web are that it is first, constantly changing, and second, practically everything is saved. So if you, like me, and many others, have ever said you will "never" do something, or will "quit" doing something never to return, you're just setting yourself up to be wrong. And once you undo that promise, you can look pretty silly in the process. So, if you are wavering in whether or not you will use a product, or if you're thinking of walking away from one you have already tried, it probably makes sense to keep the dialog internal, instead of sharing with the masses.

First, let me point out how dumb I was for trying this.

In January of 2007, I said, Why I Stopped Using IM and Won't Use Twitter. I wrote:

"What is said over IM is very rarely business, and prevents people from getting work done. It's a significant time-waster, and a technology whose time has come and gone. The idea that I would take it up a notch and tell Twitter my every step is yet another task that would get in the way of my actually working, so we're not interested."

So... yeah, how did that go? Well, a full year later (a long time hold out for me), I announced I "jumped the shark" on Twitter, and started using it. Almost a year later, I've now updated my Twitter account more than 1,400 times, and am following or being followed by about 4,000 people each direction.

In March of 2007, I took things a step further, and thought I'd be smart about saying not just one but TEN services I would "never" use. In a post titled, "Ten Geeky Technologies Not Coming to Our House", I listed Skype, Twitter, Linux, Plaxo, MySpace, BeBo, Piczo, XBox, PS3, the Wii, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Yahoo! IM, GTalk, Delicous, Flickr and EV-DO as things that would never make it in our home. In case you were counting, yes, that's more than 10 items, but I had grouped the game consoles, IM clients and social networks, for example.

So where do we stand? I have a Skype account, which I've used maybe three times in total. I have a Plaxo Pulse account. I signed up with a MySpace account, just to search for times my content was being used or linked to, we are big fans of the Nintendo Wii in our home, I've used Google Talk several times from within GMail, and I bookmarked almost 2,000 different Web sites on my Delicious account this year alone. Add onto that the fact I use my Flickr account for some photos of the twins, though I prefer SmugMug, and I look like a complete fool. Clearly, the mistake was mine to even say I was going to ignore these products, because in the interim, not only did those products get better, but I found more than an edge case to use them.

The same rule applies for those who might be using a service, and then loudly say they are quitting, never to return. Why do that, unless you're either looking for attention, or hoping others will join your cause?

For example, Mark Hopkins (formerly of Mashable) quit FriendFeed back in October, during a very political time for the site. He is back, of course, after a two-month hiatus. Similarly, when directeur, the creator of NoiseRiver, said he was going to leave FriendFeed (which we covered in October as well), the vacation didn't last all that long. He was back and active on the site within days.

More visibly, Jason Calacanis claimed in November that he was retiring from blogging, preferring to use an e-mail list to get his word out. While the e-mail list is alive and kicking, and growing, he has started posting to his blog again, practically every day, even if just to post pictures, or add a copy of his newsletter. It happens.

In May of 2007, we covered a topic I called "blog fatigue", specifically pointing to a few folks who were taking a breather from their sites. Truth is, we could all use a breather sometimes, be it from the blogging, or any services, but rather than say we're never going back, or never going to use something, it makes more sense to both keep an open mind, and probably, a closed mouth. I've proven I can be a leading indicator of nonsense, so don't expect me to tell you what I'll never use. I just might change my mind later.

With an ever-growing number of applications out there enabling you to get near-instant access to news stories, friends' status updates, and social networking activity, many people are feeling panicked. A not too uncommon refrain I've seen is that there is too much "noise", and this fear of noise is what is holding back the growth of some services, or stopping people, who may have already chosen one they liked, from signing up to more news sources and social networks.

But the authors of these services aren't in the business of telling you how you should consume your data. What the best services have done is given you the flexibility to choose how much data you have at your fingertips, how quickly you want to get it, and in what form. And just because a popular site like Twitter or FriendFeed may be turning on features that enable a more real-time, firehose effect, and can now be found on your mobile phone or your IM client in no way means you need to sign up, or turn your life over to the updates.

Mark Evans, a sharp Canadian blogger, writes today, Help, We’re Being Digitally Bombarded, saying "consumers of digital services and content are being swamped, and madly scrambling to keep up." He echoes the comments of Erick Schonfeld, who in his coverage of FriendFeed's new IM tool said, "I need less noise in my life, not more noise."

I get that Mark and Erick aren't going to turn on those features right away, and most won't. Mark specifically hasn't been enamored by FriendFeed thus far, saying "I don't know why FriendFeed hasn't resonated with me," in a previous post. (Has Friendfeed Stalled?) But in my opinion, services whose product is essentially information and updates from users should be able to turn up the speed as fast as possible, or let you slow it down if you aren't interested. And that's what has happened here.

There will always be a core element of users on the edge who love the newest, fastest features. I find FriendFeed's real-time updates interesting during peak times, but prefer to walk through lists one by one most days. I also don't run any Twitter client, so I don't look at friends' updates as they flow by. I read my Google Reader feeds in quick bursts, rather than leaving the applications open all day. And on top of each of these workflow issues, you always have control.

1. You control how many feeds you sign up to.
2. You control how many friends you add.
3. You can filter how many services you see.
4. You can choose where you access the result.

I've written about the issue of noise a few times before, of course.

In April, I said, How You Handle the Information Overload Is Up to You. In August, I wrote, There is No Social Media Overload, and also in April, I outlined My Social Media Consumption Workflow. In the last six-plus months, my social media consumption workflow hasn't changed much. I added socialmedian and Strands.com to the mix, but I am in no way overwhelmed with noise and its velocity because I know I am in control, and I use filters to show the best data from the best people.

I am all for the information providers giving us the keys to the equivalent of a Ferrari, but if we choose to motor along in a Toyota instead, that's absolutely our call. Just be on the road, and don't give up your license.

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

FriendFeed is on a roll lately, completely outpacing Twitter and other services in updates and access to your entire social graph. Just the other day I spoke about Enjit, a service which enables you to receive the entire FriendFeed firehose of data over your IM client. And now, as of today, FriendFeed has made an announcement of their own stating they will be providing their own instant messaging client to the service.


Add IM capability to your FriendFeed in Account Settings
To enable the service, go into your FriendFeed account settings, and click the button to enable your IM notifications. If you have a Gmail address or other Jabber client, your address will have already been populated into the address bar. Otherwise, fill it out. After clicking the enable button you'll receive a message via IM asking to add the FriendFeed user to your IM client, and then asking you to confirm by clicking on a link. Once you do that, you're set up!

From the account settings you can choose to enable either all posts, all posts and comments from your friends, or all posts and all comments on the site - FriendFeed is truly opening up their entire fire-hose to all with this update! Watching my IM client, (you can add me at [email protected]), I am seeing updates almost every second, if not more.

In addition to receiving posts and comments, you can also post back. This includes following and posting to rooms! To post messages back, FriendFeed has provided the following commands for their interface. From their Web site:

FriendFeed assigns a number to each entry when it is sent to you. You can use this number to comment on or like the entry. See the commands below for some examples.

@me message
Post a new message to your feed

@me
List the entries in your feed

@roomname message
Post a new message to the room with nickname roomname

@roomname
List the entries in the room with nickname roomname

@N comment
Comment on entry N. When you receive entry and comment notifications via IM, they are all prefixed with @N. You can reply to them by prefixing your comment with the same @N.

@N
Show entry N. Useful when you get a comment on @N and you want to see the original post.

like N
Like entry N

@nickname
List the entries in the the given user's feed

pause
Pause IM notifications

resume
Resume IM notifications

list
List the most recent entries you have received via IM

help
Print the list of IM commands

FriendFeed has just made their move in this microblogging and aggregation game of chess. Neither Facebook nor Twitter has the slew of aggregation and microblogging features and openness FriendFeed provides, so it will be interesting to see how this progresses. Dustin Sallings and Ken Sheppardson are rumored to be working on a Track IM solution to FriendFeed, so it will be interesting as things take shape if FriendFeed can beat Twitter at its own game.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

FriendFeed just hit a huge milestone recently as developers have finally tapped into its real-time feed of updates, and provided a Google Chat or Jabber interface on top of it all, enabling both users and developers to gain real-time data about the entire Social Web. Two Developers very prominent in the Laconi.ca world, Dustin Sallings and Ken Sheppardson, have headed up the effort and provided an easy way for you and I to receive your FriendFeed updates, real-time, over simple instant messaging. The service is called Enjit.

One of my favorite parts of Twitter when I started seriously using it about a year ago was that I could send and receive my Tweets, real-time, via Google Chat or other Jabber-supported services. I simply needed to add the Twitter user to my client, and all my friends' Tweets would come through as they were sent to my IM client. This meant I could open it up on my desktop, my phone, or wherever else I had a Jabber-supported IM client. I remember Scoble sharing with us in awe via Qik and elsewhere about how he was getting Tweets every second or more, and how amazing it was to see communication around the world, as it happened.

Now, because of FriendFeed, not only do we have access to the world of Twitter, but we now have access to Identi.ca, Pownce, Facebook, blogs, Flickr, Delicious, and almost the entire Social Web, real time, and you can now get that as it happens in your IM client. The premise is simple:



The First Step: Add Enjit (FriendFeed) to Your IM Client.
Set Up

To get set up with FriendFeed IM, all you need to do is open up Google Chat, or any other Jabber-supported service or client, and add [email protected] to your Buddy List. You can name it "FriendFeed" if you like, or just leave it as is. Then, send: username to that user in your IM client. You can get your remote key from FriendFeed here.

Using Enjit FriendFeed IM

As soon as you are authenticated, you'll start getting updates from FriendFeed immediately. Your updates will come in the form of [xx][source] entry_author: entry text | comment_author: comment text - "xx" is just a unique id for each comment or post on FriendFeed. "Source" is the service the update or comment came from. "entry_author" is the author of the post or comment. Following that is the text of the comment or post.


Send and Receive Updates to FriendFeed Using IM.
Sending Updates to FriendFeed

Sending updates is easy! To send a new post or status update to FriendFeed, send post your message, where "your message" is the message you want to send to FriendFeed. To respond as a comment to any post, send xx your comment where "xx" is the "xx" above uniquely identifying the posted item you want to comment on, and "your comment" is the comment you want to append to that post.

Enjit and FriendFeed have essentially just given us all a Command-Line into the Social Web. Now, in one place, you can receive and send updates to all your updates through a simple command-line chat interface. With FriendFeed's recent integration with Twitter and the ability to send your posts to FriendFeed back to Twitter, you could even use it as a Twitter chat client! Now, the clencher - Dustin Sallings is well known in the Laconi.ca crowd for creating chat-based Track on Identi.ca and Twitter. Will we see real-time track come to FriendFeed soon? Thanks to FriendFeed, we now have chat and real-time updates back on Twitter.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

As the world of online "friends" is getting increasingly blurred, and many of us are joining social network after social network, expanding our realm of friends to mean much more than just those we know in real life, artificial rules of etiquette are being created for when you follow someone or add them as a friend, and when you don't. And when two people have different, unequal rules, there is a potential for conflict, or hurt feelings, even when we have the option to step back and realize this is all very silly. No one hard and fast rule works for everybody, and I would expect that the "rules" are different for each network, given the impact "following" can mean.

This whole ruckus about "You didn't follow me! I'm going to unsubscribe!" led me to playfully suggest a new approach this evening:


(See the FriendFeed response to my Tweet here)

The issue of who to friend started well before social networking sites like Friendster and MySpace took hold, and before Twitter and FriendFeed changed the game in terms of how adding somebody as a friend could open a floodgate of information.

Early demands on who to add as a friend were problematic even in the early days of AOL Instant Messenger. Making my AIM address open to family and close friends was one thing, but soon, casual acquaintances would want my AIM address, and logging on to the service left me at their whim for contacting me, or seeing my status. Soon, I was hiding my service, pretending to be away from the desk, or blocking the very same people who still thought we were AIM friends.

With Friendster, the issue of "friending" again came up. Would I accept the friend request from a college roommate I really wasn't all that fond of? What about if there was a girl I had a crush on, who I wanted to follow, but I didn't want to "friend" in case she figured it out? (Complicated, I know)

Suddenly, the issue of friending became less about wanting to actually follow real friends, or peers, and instead, became an arms race - to get the most followers, to follow the most people, to rise up a leaderboard, or feel some kind of achievement because you could claim a friend as a household name.

There became issues with Facebook only accepting 5,000 friends. Twitter saw people set up rules to auto-follow anyone who followed them, even as it became common to follow thousands or tens of thousands. FriendFeed has seen many do the same, even though to follow a person there means not just Twitter updates, but blogs, photos, videos, and dozens more services, in addition to integrated comments.

Soon, the concept of auto-following, and gaining prominence over following a huge number, or being followed by a big name became the norm. While it might make sense for a Robert Scoble or a Duncan Riley to do it, for the rest of us, the firehose of data can be choking. And by opting out of the automatic following process, we can be called on the carpet for not acting the way others expect us to.

A few key examples:

Rahsheen Porter:
The A-List Doesn’t Care About Your FriendFeed
echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null
FriendFeed: Should I unsubscribe from people who don't follow me back ?
Pixel Bits:
Subscribing, unsubscribing, do you like me? Do you hate me?

This issue is highlighted by services which show you the disparity between those you follow, and who follows you. For Twitter, there are sites like Twitter Karma and Less Friends, and recently, one was developed for FriendFeed, called FriendVenn. Of note, I've used Twitter Karma to get my lists in sync, but haven't been able to use FriendVenn, as it's limited to 3,000 total connections so far, and I'm ahead of that mark, even if I didn't follow anybody on FriendFeed at all.

There's nothing wrong with seeing the disparity in bulk, rather than on a one by one basis, but it's more of a curiosity than a call to action in my mind.

On Twitter, I used to be quite selective about who I would follow. But over time, thanks to the improvement of Summize and Twitter's frequent downtimes, I'm not using the Web interface to watch Tweets, but only to send notes. Now, there's really zero impact to me to following a bazillion people. If it makes them feel good, then I have no problem adding them to my stream. But in reality, unless they say my name, or a search query I'm watching in TweetDeck, I'll probably never see their updates.

FriendFeed is a different story altogether. FriendFeed's best environment is the Web interface, where you see all updates. A FriendFeed follow is a lot "heavier" than a Twitter follow, as you get all the updates from all the disparate services. This means that while you can casually follow tens of thousands on Twitter, it can be a bit overwhelming to follow even a few hundred on FriendFeed, unless you're absolutely comfortable with missing out on some updates. As a result, I've been a little slower to follow people there, even as my in box on some days can be flooded with new followers.

The way I choose to follow people on FriendFeed was first, people I knew, or engaged with elsewhere, second, following people who engaged in my activity through comments and on the feeds of the others I followed, and third, friends that those I follow engaged with, and whom I shared interests.

This more tentative approach means I have only 300+ people I follow on FriendFeed instead of 3,100 or more. I believe that by adding more and more, the fun and engagement will surely be lost, just as it was on Twitter's Web interface when I added so many people, or in Facebook, where I get new friend requests daily from people I'll probably never meet. I expect there are probably some good 250 to 500 new people who I'll find interesting on FriendFeed who might be following me now, but I want to make that choice after seeing their activity, not just on automatic.

Am I really going to overweight my social networks with ladies? Probably not, as fun as that sounds. But am I going to overweight every network with every single follower I possibly can, again, probably not. The way I use Twitter and FriendFeed or Facebook or LinkedIn or any other service that relies so heavily on connections is the way that I do it, period. It's not necessarily the way you should do it, and no one right way is right for all people. But if there is a point where I'm not following you, and you are following me, it's probably not personal, and it shouldn't be made personal. To each their own.

About a year ago, I wrote how I had completely sworn off instant messaging, and how, despite its fast-rising user base, I had no intention of using Twitter. And so far, I haven't given in to the siren song. While I hadn't expected to ever gain a Facebook account, and eventually succumbed, Twitter has remained on my personal "Do Not Call" list.

Meanwhile, as I remain a Twitter luddite, others swear by it. I find myself occasionally checking in on the Twitter streams of friends and others like Allen Stern, MG Siegler, Steven Hodson and Robert Scoble. I see quick conversations they have with Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins and Hugh MacLoed and Jason Calacanis, as they share ideas, comment on the news of the day, and spam each other with the latest blog URLs. I see them Twittering from my FriendFeed and on my Spokeo.

Yet as far as Twitter is concerned, I don't exist. I'm not part of the conversation. Do I need to be? Or can I remain, as MG Siegler called me, an "Anti-Twittite"?

Last night, I wanted to write to Mark Hopkins at Mashable in response to an article he'd posted. But, without his e-mail or cell phone, the only way I could get through to him was through a public comment on his blog. I could have used Twitter... in theory, but then, I'd have to sign up just for that one off, and I expect it'd be a slippery slope before I started adding everybody I knew to follow, and began measuring my self worth in the numbers of people I followed or followed me on Twitter. Not good.

So I was this close to finally giving in and signing up, just like I gave in on Facebook. Just like I gave in on getting a Nintendo Wii after listing it in my Ten Geeky Technologies Not Coming to Our House post back in March of 2007, along with Del.icio.us and Flickr. But I didn't give in. This time. For I believe, outside of the occasional focused conversation, Twitter remains a noisy, ineffective tool for typical communication.

So... for those of you who swear by it. Tell me why I'm wrong. Please. Tell me how you use Twitter, and why I should join you. I'm listening.

One of the most exciting things about blogging is finding how content is distributed in new ways. Through a single post, my content can be read on the blog directly, through RSS feeds, via e-mail summaries, and now, even by mobile phone, thanks to Feedblitz' new partnership with Twitter, announced today.

While I'm no huge fan of Twitter so far, Feedblitz has, for more than a year, been a great way for me to update passive visitors to the blog, who can routinely expect updates on a daily basis, as the Feedblitz e-mail goes out anywhere from 11 to midnight, containing posts from louisgray.com from the last 24 hours. The e-mail comes to their mail box to be read at their leisure.

Meanwhile, despite my protestations, Twitter is growing like a weed, and has gathered tremendous buzz in the blogosphere. (Early adopters include Steve Rubel and Robert Scoble, which helps...)

Feedblitz is smart to extend its content distribution to subscribers who have let it known they would rather be updated through Twitter than by other methods. Additionally, Feedblitz has added an intelligent, necessary, twist. Rather than submitting the full content of my feeds to the Twitter customers, who often pay their mobile carrier by the character, Feedblitz offers recipients a fast summary, and then a "TinyURL" that links to the full story. TinyURL, quite simply, turns long URLs (e.g. www.domain.com/directory/date/topic/story_name.html) to "tiny URLs" (e.g. www.tinyurl.com/77apr08) This will save their customers money, and reduce potential barriers to entry. This in turn fits within Twitter's 140 character limit.

As the Feedblitz site says, "Twitter syndication from FeedBlitz posts the relevant entries to the subscriber’s Twitter timeline as “tweets.” The subscriber can then get SMS text or IM alerts, as will anyone following that timeline." If you're a Twitterer, so to speak, and you want to stay updated on this blog, this just might be the holy grail.

Sign up to Feedblitz now and get louisgray.com by e-mail or Twitter

One of the most-recent fads to sweep the Web is that of Twitter, a service where you leave simple, short messages telling people just what it is you are doing right now, whether that's eating breakfast, walking the dog, cramming for an exam or watching television. The idea behind it is instant insight and status sharing, taking blogging up a notch beyond a daily journal, to instead, a minute by minute chronicle of your day. And I'm not in the least bit interested.

When Instant Messaging (IM) first debuted, it was a great way for people to chat one to one between computers, without the slowness of e-mail exchanges or cost of using the phone. When I first saw an instant message from one computer to another, I was floored, and I can tell you exactly where I was, just like I can tell you exactly where I was the first time I heard a computer speak with a human voice, and the first time I saw webcams used. Each time, I recognized just how cool these technologies could be. But with each, they found a niche, not a revolution.

Like everyone else, I first used instant messaging to talk with friends and family, but then it started to spread to casual contacts and colleagues. The intimacy was gone, as people would add buddies to their buddy list to increase their feelings of self-worth. Entire web sites were built with a goal of comparing one person's buddy list length to another. And as in the real world, sometimes you just didn't want to let some of those people on the buddy list know you were available, leading to annoying conversations started by people who knew just when you logged on and off, and if you were idle or busy. Then came the need to hide yourself from individuals who kept you on their buddy list, even as you had deleted them from yours.

The actual benefits of instant messaging quickly went away for me. Conversations that should have taken place in 3-5 minutes on the phone would now take 15-20 minutes, 5 of which would be awkwardly used trying to get the conversation to a close, waiting for direct responses to questions, and making sure you weren't both typing at once. And the idea that instant messages would aid you in collaboration at work were a bunch of hooey. Anybody I know at the office using IM is using it to talk to a spouse or friend, or, if with another colleague, to complain about the boss or another co-worker. The actual productivity of IM is a significant negative.

I uninstalled my AOL and Yahoo! instant messenger clients from my work computer and laptop a long time ago. At home, I still have iChat, built into the Apple operating system, and have Proteus tucked away for that rare time I think of a reason to use it - but I intentionally told my Mac not to turn on instant messaging services on login, so nobody could bug me.

It's real simple. What is said over IM is very rarely business, and prevents people from getting work done. It's a significant time-waster, and a technology whose time has come and gone. The idea that I would take it up a notch and tell Twitter my every step is yet another task that would get in the way of my actually working, so we're not interested.