twitter, plurk, swurl: Distraction or Opportunity

Paul Graham observes that "Procrastination feeds on distractions. Most people find it uncomfortable just to sit and do nothing; you avoid work by doing something else."

Are we avoiding doing something else via friendfeed, twitter, plurk?

The answer is: probably - or sometimes. Heck, for some people it might be all the time.

But for others the attention given to these new formats of the old telephone "party line", which you could pick up and hear your next door neighbor getting duped by her boyfriend or grandma Buford telling he daughter what was on sale at Kroger's, is in keeping wiht their goals.

Some of us use microblogging to inform ourselves; some to inform others

We network, soothe and sympathize, learn, tease, trash-talk, do good, find others with whom we have things in common, locate a new service or today's bargain, and yes, even take a water-cooler break.

It's a round the clock, drop-in when you want, equal opportunity to show the side of yourself you'd like others to see. Or a place to be anonymous if need be. For me it's a place to be myself even at 2AM when I can't sleep and my brain's still at work.

If it's a distraction, it's one that's done good for many, even if the only thing one counts is the grassroots founding of the Frozen Pea Fund. And close to $40,000 later, raising money to do good in large and small ways based on an impulse decision to show a cleavage shot soothed with frozen peas after a biopsy - well, it's an amazing thing.

Scrolling and dipping in

I use twhirl in a side window and let the incoming messages scroll by as I so other things because truthfully keeping the twitter homepage open all day is something that I could not do and accomplish anything else. Unless I was a shut-in with no other interests I couldn't use twitter as my window on the world all day every day.

But what if that were the case? Bingo - introduce twitter in homes for the aged or infirm, Introduce it to people suffereing from chronic illness. Introduce it to people who are less mobile than they used to be, for whatever reason, It serves as an excellent distraction, an escape from loneliness or pain or lack of purpose. And plurk might serve this purpose as well.

And the way it's set up, leaving plurk open in a tab is the only way to go, so it could obviously work for shut-ins and others. And the set-up truthfully - that one must view plurk on the website and the lack of a client in which to view plurk - is why it's never taken off for me, While others adore the threaded conversations, since going to the homepage and looking through messages is obligatory I just can't see the advantage.

So to me Plurk seems little more than a fancy graphic incarnation of a message board with pull-down tabs to see the message thread. In the end after giving it a shot, it's not a distraction for me, it's more an annoyance, though some social media types love it and swear it's the future when twitter dies a horrible death.

And that brings us to the future - and the past

We're safe because even when - if - twitter dies, some of it will live on in an aggregator I'm liking a lot: swurl. You can leave replies to stuff there and that can be interesting in its own way. And there's even a timeline tab. Gotta check that out. Very informative and goes back TEN years!

In any case, in the meantime I'm distracted and maybe procrastinating. Oh - and networking and doing good and reaching out and all that other stuff I rationalize that I'm doing in the meantime.

Comments

[Mark Salinas]

I think the tools mentioned can be very useful for somebody that wants to get a message out, or as a marketing resource, maybe expanding ones business? What about discussing subjects of interest. Personally Plurk gives me a headache..the scrolling theme and all the bright colors. Twitter seems to work for me when the whale is on vacation. :)

[Denise]

For the time being, I've left Twitter alone. It was just a distraction, and I could not get around to doing it regularly.

[Susan Reynolds]

mousewords, You'd be a great one to brainstorm how this could be used. I'm thinking even rehab after strokes - I now I used twitter and Second Life that way a bit.

I'd classify you as a dipper. You dip your cup in the stream of conversation, have some good interaction, then go off to do what you've got on the "to do" list for the day. More power to you!

[mousewords]

"Introduce twitter in homes for the aged or infirm, Introduce it to people suffereing from chronic illness. Introduce it to people who are less mobile than they used to be, for whatever reason..."

That's a great thought!

I definitely think about the value vs. procrastination question often. For myself, I can tell inside when my time is well spent, and when I'm just hanging out in the community because it's so much fun. :-) It *does* have great value; but I have to be careful not to use that as an excuse. :-)