April 6, 2008
How some bloggers feel about IM and Twitter
[I]n terms of IM status, I never consider myself “available” in the sense of “interruptible.” Ever. There is no time of any day, under any circumstances, when I think to myself, “I really don’t mind being interrupted now.“
—Joe Kissell, “Instant Messaging for Introverts,” at TidBITS
A long and interesting article by a guy who has to use IM from time to time, even though he hates it and finds it completely disruptive.
It should surprise no one who followed this thread to learn that I absolutely cannot use IM. I mean, not that I’ve ever even tried it, but I know that it would obliterate what little scraps of productivity remain to me since the advent of always-on Internet. I do use Twitter once or twice a day (just enough to keep it from pinging my much-hated cell phone to remind me to Twitter), but as Kissell says,
Unlike IM, receiving a tweet in Twitter doesn’t obligate you to carry on a conversation, so even if, say, Twitterrific is running in the background and pops up every time someone I’m following has something to say, I find it much less intrusive and bothersome than IM. I don’t always read the tweets, but I often do, and I learn some interesting things that way.
When people first started going on about Twitter, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of. And then . . . I joined Facebook and learned just how hot and smokily the stupid could burn. By comparison, I now see Twitter as a useful and well-conceived application, but I still try to keep my participation to a minimum.
I use Twitterific at home, and combined with Growl it’s a relatively interruptive application; at work, however, I use some nasty little Dashboard application instead, so that I have to hit F12 to see it. This I do only when I’m using the dictionary widget, which is maybe once or twice a day, and whatever Twitter widget it is that I use is so bad that it shows only the most recent tweet by any of the people I follow—rarely enough to suck me in—and in a too-small, jaggy font.
So Twitter is manageable, so far. I’ll occasionally post a “What I’m doing” from work, but I won’t ask a question that would invite a volley, because I know that I probably won’t be back for hours. Then, when I get home and flip open my laptop (elapsed time from entry into apartment: <5 min.), Twitteriffic pulls down all the tweets I’ve missed since breakfast. It helps also that I follow very few people through Twitter itself, so I don’t have a lot to catch up on. I follow a few more people’s tweets through my RSS reader, but there’s no urgency to reading those, since by definition they’re not tweets I’m going to have to respond to—those people don’t know I’m following them, so they’ll neither address tweets to me nor read anything I post in reply (unless they’re following me through RSS, too, in which case we’re both too stealthy for our own good).
And Kissell’s IM workaround of always having “Do not disturb” status but asking people to e-mail him when they really do need to have a chat right then wouldn’t work for me, since I emphatically do not practice Inbox Zero, and I often ignore messages for minutes or hours or days, if I don’t just lose them entirely.
What’s your take? Do you Twitter, IM, neither, both? If you IM, how do you get on with your life?
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2 Responses to “How some bloggers feel about IM and Twitter”
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[...] clusterflock – “When people first started going on about Twitter, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of. And then . . . I joined Facebook and learned just how hot and smokily the stupid could burn.” Posted in twitter, IM | Trackback | del.icio.us | Top Of Page [...]
I IM and Twitter while I work, but I’ve never found it consuming or interruptive. When I’m productive, I tell people to piss off, and when I’m waiting for a build/upload/etc., I muse, chat, or ask questions.
IM is generally less interruptive than a phone call or walk-in-my-office question. I can chat on IM while testing something, and not lose my place. You come in my office, though, and there’s a 10% chance we’ll have shaved a yak before you leave. Sometimes my fault, sometimes theirs.
A phone call is worse. The damed ring is loud, and you have the requisite ENQ/ACK (or ENQ/NAK) handshake to go through every fucking time. I’m pretty sure the phone is retarded technology, that will eventually be replaced with video chat and a fog horn.
But when I’m head’s down, the most important thing is to flip the “bugger off” switch. DND on IM, and shut down notifications, ringers, and close the fucking door. If you want to be productive, it’s a choice to shut down the distractions, whatever they are.