What I Learned Without Twitter and Friendfeed
May 01 2008 
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On Wednesday, I took a Twitter and Friendfeed hiatus for an entire day. Plenty of people thought it would kill me, but I want to thank you all for the support and well wishes. Here’s a breakdown of how it went.
First, What Did I Learn?
I think sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in some of the hype that surrounds what’s talked about on Twitter. Maybe it’s contagious? Regardless, my excitement for what I saw yesterday was at an all-time low. The most interesting thought for me was that while I had a handful of apps I could have chosen to talk about, being off of Twitter made me want to post something thoughtful. I had so much time to reflect and analyze what I was reading. Things were slower and paced.
This reaction made me wonder if being on Twitter helped to unconsciously change my moods or set the tone for my posts.
Twitter Is Crack
Twitter is crack people (I’ve been saying this for months)! Twitter is more than just a social hub for me. Twitter is ME! It’s where I make connections, "meet" someone new everyday, share my ups and downs, do research. I basically do everything on Twitter except eat, sleep, and drink. But I can always do those while Twittering.
On the other hand, Twitter is a huge distraction. It’s like being at a party and trying to socialize with everyone in the same room, while knowing that you need to get going and do other things. I had bookmarks that I was supposed to do something about up to 3 weeks ago, but had put off because of Twitter! Obviously I need more Twitter discipline.
Friendfeed Is Weed
Just to note, I don’t do drugs. Based on what I’ve heard about weed, that’s what I’d compare Friendfeed to. It’s not as addictive and I peruse it leisurely and more so for the conversations than the content. I wasn’t feigning for Friendfeed, but I sorely missed it. I wanted to know what others were saying for some articles that had yet to receive comments on the original post, though I knew someone probably had posted a comment on Friendfeed first.
Note to Friendfeed users: Please stop doing this. (Conversation Fragmentation: Bloggers Have Duties)
How My Day Went
12:00am – 3am
Most Notable Thing I Did: Go through an entire WordPress gallery of over 300 themes.
During the first 3 hours of my hiatus, I was bored out of my mind. Usually, I don’t get to sleep until about 4am, and Twitter is running in the background for me to idly chat with my followers. I decided that I wanted to look for another WordPress theme. I ended up going through well over 300 themes; an entire WordPress theme gallery and half of another one. Both galleries were about 30 pages long. As you can see, I didn’t find a theme I liked.
If you were on Friendfeed at the time, I bombarded you with tons of stumbles, Disqus comments, Google Reader Shared Items, and Mixx submissions. Yes, I was that bored and this pattern continued throughout the day.
12pm – Until
Most Notable Thing I Did: Spaced out and opened Twitter’s homepage without thinking. Close call!
With no Twitter, I was actually quite productive. I cleaned out my inbox (over 500 emails), sorted through all of my Google Reader Starred Items, and organized all of my Firefox bookmarks (over 200). This certainly would not have happened anytime soon with Twitter running in the background. This was around the time I realized that I didn’t want to write about yet another application. I wanted to post something thoughtful, hence my previous post "Social Media Has Not Reached Mainstream" .
Twitter Is My Social Lifeline Online
At the end of the day, I realized that my social life online took a huge plummet without Twitter. While I had some great conversations on Google Talk, got in trouble for "Twitter Proxying" via Marshall Kirkpatrick, and received a host of emails wishing me luck, and a hilarious e-card from the awesomesauce Sarah Perez, it just wasn’t the same without Twitter. I missed the "real time" of Twitter. I had questions I wanted to ask, content I wanted to share, and more conversations that I wanted to enjoy. There were even people that I couldn’t get in contact with because I only knew their Twitter handle, and honestly, who keeps backups of that?
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I mean no offense or disrespect to those who do use & like these services, but they just seem like so much white noise to me. I'd rather focus what time I have on blog posts than getting bogged down with these or all of the social networking sites.
Wow! You did it, I've had days where I've come close, but then I feel like I need to read through and reply to a bunch of tweets that I didn't get to earlier. Congrats on the accomplishment, you were definitely missed.
No offense taken :) Some of us use it more so for our own personal networks
and for networking reasons. I can definitely understand why you wouldn't
want the added distractions.
No offense taken here.
Blogging is great and all but it's only piece of the puzzle for me. Blogs are the instigators, they create the initial disturbance; while services like Twitter and Friendfeed are where the real discussion happens.
The conversation: the buzz, the exchange of ideas and thoughts, is evolving. Blog comments are not where its at — as a blogger, if you don't find where the discussions are taking place, I think you're missing out on a huge opportunity.
Well done Corvida, that's a big accomplishment! I thought the narcotics analogies were fitting. I find both services highly addictive!
So what's next? A Twitter, Friendfeed, AND Google Reader hiatus? :P
God no. I would probably literally die then. I'm thinking about maybe going
a day without Google Reader, or may an entire weekend when news is slow. I
would have to catch up on these things once I get back in GReader, so I
don't want to stay off for too long, you know? With Twitter, I don't need to
catch-up. Everything just keeps moving. Not so with Google Reader.
After this experiment I'm really rethinking the whole conversation
fragmentation thing. If you're not on Friendfeed or Twitter, you're sorely
missing these conversations and I think that's unfair to those who don't
wish to join the services. I got a taste of that yesterday and it's an
isolation that no one should be forced into. That's exactly what users of
Friendfeed and Twitter are doing when they don't post their comments on the
original article. I'm doing my best to not contribute too much to this
problem. (see the conversation fragmentaiton: bloggers have duties post for
more).
Really nice post here Corvida. Cold turkey on Twitter let you get some focus on longer form information. Perhaps an occasional Twitter day is in order?
And reading this post inspired a possible post for me. If I write it, I'll be linking back here.
To an extent, I agree. I don't wish to force everyone to join up to these services either. At the same time however; I'm not always going to comment on the original blog post.
Just as many people don't use Friendfeed and Twitter, there are also many people who do use those services that aren't subscribed to the blog.
This is why we need the facility for conversations to be gathered in one place so that we can track them. The more service that pass the comments they hold back to the source the better – we may not respond at the actual blog but at least the blog will have a way of getting to them all.
If Rob can further develop YackTrack and maybe even have it passing it's results back to the blog then I think we'll be getting somewhere.
But yacktrack reminds me more so of TrackBacks and not necessarily a tool to
grab comments or conversations about your content.
In it's current form maybe, but once it has evolved it could be some much more. Or how about if Disqus extend their remit.
In my case, I source my blog posts from outside input. While Google Reader is my primary source for material to write about, FriendFeed is also an important source.
I've seen the widget “On FriendFeed, this post was liked by x people” on some blogs before, but I haven't pursued the widget. Is it available on FriendFeed itself, or from another source? To a limited extent, it seems to solve the conversation fragmentation issue.
Is it necessary for all the comments to be centralized? As long as I can find the comments, I really don't care where they're occurring. If some people don't like your centralization point, the conversation may be dimished.
If I were to spend an entire weekend off of Google Reader, there would be between 500 and 1000 items awaiting me on my return. Too overwhelming.
I check my work email on vacation for the same reason.
Friendfeed has the widget, and of course there are plenty that are made
through other widget services. Here's Friendfeed's widget, just change the
url to include your friendfeed handle instead of mine.
http://friendfeed.com/embed?user=corvida
It's not necessary, just convenient for both the author and new visitors.
I can't believe you made it – great job! And nice post :)
Thanks. I have the widget that shows recent activity, but will look for the one that shows reactions to a particular blog post.
I'm not so sure I agree completely here, Shey. I don't do much blog commenting, but I find it incredibly cool that I can follow a bunch of people in Disqus and then have their comments come to me in an RSS feed. Sure, I only get a part of the story much of the time, but it has exposed me to some new blogs and new insights that I wouldn't have seen otherwise.
To me, the discussions on twitter, friendfeed, and blogs are all valid, and different types. I don't know if there are real-world analogs here, but you could think of twitter as a party, friendfeed as dinner conversation (at a big table perhaps, with some big-name guests) and blog conversations as panels at a conference. They all have their place, and eventually, the ideas generated in one realm siphon over to the other realms.
If you have a blog that reports on the state of the art social applications, as many of us do, one of the things we do best is take the swirling gray chaos of twitter and friendfeed, see the connections and value, and generate a blog entry from the process. Then, it is reviewed by our peers.
Don't get me wrong — blogs definitely have their place and play a highly important role, but the blog posts themselves are no longer the venue for the conversation. Other services are doing a much better job at it. Blog comments are usually just closed statements about the reader's opinion on article — most commenters don't even look at the other comments.
I'm not saying discussion can't happen or shouldn't happen on the post, I'm saying that it's occurring less and less over time.
Ok, I pretty much agree with everything you say here.
What's actually even more sad is that we haven't mentioned discussion forums or bulletin boards at all in this thread. And those are supposedly 'pure conversation'.
Haha that's true — but hey, we're having a great discussion here!
I really need to get Disqus on my blog
The only hard part with Disqus is that they don't have something to migrate existing comments. For me, it wasn't a big deal, when I put Disqus on I think my blog had a total of 4 comments, and I think Corvida (who had posted half of them) will get over it. Heh.
When I'm on vacation — I try not to even go on the net, unless I need directions or something.
That and I don't think they incorporate trackbacks yet.
I also need to find out how this point system thing works
Paul Arterburn pointed to a great little trackback hack that I use on my blog. Let me see if I can find the link… ah!
http://www.jangro.com/a/2008/04/08/hacking-disqus/
You deleted my comments? FAILED! :D I'm just glad you made the switch.
Nope! They are still there, but hidden by Disqus.
ha! I'm not so much addicted, but it's been interesting to watch people's twitter behavior. and its a great way to keep up with people when workign as a freelancer.
here's some thought on the question “what kindof of twidter are you?:
http://experiencefreak.com/blog/2008/05/02/twid...
interesting metaphors, i hadn't thought of them in that manner which i guess is because i do not let myself get completely wrapped p in them. i do tweet frequently, but if i am not on it for hours and hours at a time, i am ok. and i go a couple days at a time without friendfeed, weeks now without facebook and such.
but i do have a week ahead of me with no hardline to the internet- i will be drinking lots of coffee to get my connections so this will alter my computer use dramatically, i am certain, especially as most of my use is via online connections.
interesting metaphors, i hadn't thought of them in that manner which i guess is because i do not let myself get completely wrapped p in them. i do tweet frequently, but if i am not on it for hours and hours at a time, i am ok. and i go a couple days at a time without friendfeed, weeks now without facebook and such.
but i do have a week ahead of me with no hardline to the internet- i will be drinking lots of coffee to get my connections so this will alter my computer use dramatically, i am certain, especially as most of my use is via online connections.
interesting metaphors, i hadn't thought of them in that manner which i guess is because i do not let myself get completely wrapped p in them. i do tweet frequently, but if i am not on it for hours and hours at a time, i am ok. and i go a couple days at a time without friendfeed, weeks now without facebook and such.
but i do have a week ahead of me with no hardline to the internet- i will be drinking lots of coffee to get my connections so this will alter my computer use dramatically, i am certain, especially as most of my use is via online connections.