A nice catch up with Phil Dickinson this lunchtime, and a wide and varied conversation over a sandwich on Charlotte Street.
One connection that we made during our conversation was a fundamental difference that current Web2.0-type services that stream updates (such as Twitter, Facebook or Buzz) have from the Old World. In the Old World, if something was worth writing down, then it probably meant that what ever “it” was meant that the recipients were expected to both read and then action upon “it”.
In the Twitterverse (Jeez!), if you try to read, let alone action everything that is posted to which you have subscribed, then you will go mad. These media are there to be grazed. It's casual conversation stuff, “water cooler moments” (or “fag breaks” as it used to be in more nicotine-obsessed times).
If you take a tweet at the value of an old-fashioned memo, you're in trouble. Equally, if you issue out tweets as commandments, you'll be highly frustrated.
Since lunchtime, it's also struck me that this is where email is causing no end of problems. Some people seem to see them in the old context of read and action; others as info-grazing fodder. Conflict thus ensues…
mmitII 