"Ambient awareness", or, I was just thinking that...

[Gn2Dlnd]

Boing Boing (http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/06/nyt-on-ambient-aware.html) discusses an interesting article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html) on the effects of Twitter and other social networking devices on interpersonal relations.

And when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they’ve never actually been apart. They don’t need to ask, “So, what have you been up to?” because they already know. Instead, they’ll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.

This was certainly my experience this morning at brunch. The writers heads would explode if they ever read the soooo... thread.

[BarTopDancer]

That's completely been my experience. When I saw Erica we just picked up as if we had been seeing each other all this time. You know what the others are doing. It makes socializing more efficient. You also know almost immediately when someone needs help or something that requires their friends.

[Alex]

I've found (didn't read the article to know if this point is made) that it also makes it more difficult for an outsider to participate in a new group. Every conversation starts in the middle and is even more full of assumed knowledge.

[RStar]

assumed knowledge.

If only it was that easy. Sit in a room for day, assume some knowledge, then walk out with a Masters degree. Cool.

Then go home in your flying car......

[Disneyphile]

With my phone, texting/twittering a message is really not feasible with its regular keypad. By the time I type all that crap (and I refuse to use "net speak" abbreviations), I can just call the person if it's that important.

I love my friends and all, but quite frankly, I don't care what they're doing every single minute of the day.

It's also the reason I hate IM's. I don't want to have to say, "BRB. Gotta go pee." and then rush back because I left someone waiting. Usually when I'm online, I don't want to be disturbed and like to respond at my leisure.

I just don't want to spend hours continuously chatting online. I'd rather be face-to-face with people when I'm feeling social.

[Gn2Dlnd]

My point is not so much that Twitter is a good or bad thing, but that the LoT is a perfect example of how this idea works. We've had a little conversation here, in the virtual world, that may come up in actual face-to-face conversation the next time we're at a LoT meet. In one thread we're talking about our high school experiences, in another, our political feelings, and in a third, what songs make us happy. And, of course, bacon.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

I love my friends and all, but quite frankly, I don't care what they're doing every single minute of the day.It's interesting to me that everyone has their own way to keep in touch. You enjoy livejournal, and I never could get into it. I glance at LJ once in a while, but my overall reaction is meh. I would never have the time to write that much about my life, I don't have time to read others' very long, personal posts, and to be honest, I don't want to reveal that much about my life online. Yet the short form that Twitter provides is a fun toy for me to experiment with how I express myself and I love the little windows I get into the other's lives. It really does feel like I'm always connected and can "socialize" when and wherever I want.

I wasn't around in the Usenet days so I can't speak for then, but message boards seemed to be a watershed in online socializing and remained the standard for a long time (in technology years, that is). The basic concept behind any social networking site is the same as it is here - be able to express yourself with your own handle, enabling people to get to know you. As Gn2 points out, we've always bled our conversations over from one reality to another...and now the rest of the world is catching up. ;) I guess we just did it backwards...

[Alex]

Maybe I've just self filtered around it, but on LJ, iSm is the only person I've seen who regularly posts more than a paragraph or two.

My "communication" problem with Twitter is that the window for interaction seems to be so short. If you don't reply to something pretty quickly it is just gone. But it obviously works for a lto people when it didn't click for me (I found people not using @ replies to be extremely annoying since it took what was already likely to be a pretty information empty post and made it a complete non sequiter when it is actually a reply to something I wasn't privy to). It seems to have significantly reduced traffic on my LJ friends list.

[Ghoulish Delight]

I definitely find my relationship with twitter falling in line with what's described in the OP link. The "what is everyone doing now" aspect isn't so much about people wanting to necessarily know exactly what everyone's doing. It's just the seed, that dumb excuse to pull out your phone and check the site. And so it guarantee's that someone's there and there's a conversation to be had. It's a way to fill those short bursts of downtime conversing with friends, uniquely suited to moments too short to do anything like reading or bettering one's self that go otherwise entirely wasted staring at a progress bar or sitting on hold or suffering through a powerpoint presentation

Actually I'm proud to say I have not even felt tempted to twitter or read twitter during a meeting. Right up to the start, absolutely, but once the projector turns on (there's ALWAYS a projector these days), phone is in my pocket.

[lashbear]

It seems to have significantly reduced traffic on my LJ friends list.
Well, some people haven't even been invited to your friends list yet. :p

[Stan4dSteph]

I would love to be able to socialize with more people face-to-face. The problem is that most of the people I consider good friends don't live within 1,000 miles of me. I like Twitter, but most of the time I am like Alex said, coming in too late and people have moved on to something new.

[innerSpaceman]

Maybe I've just self filtered around it, but on LJ, iSm is the only person I've seen who regularly posts more than a paragraph or two.

Or 37 as the case (often) may be. :p


But I don't find the pitfall of Excluding Outsiders any more insideous than already exists from message board participation or, in my case particularly, from simple real life outside of the 'net.

It just so happens that I'm shy with strangers, and not a good small talker with people I don't know. So at a social gathering .... I will generally not make friendly with strangers unless there is NO ONE else I know. If there's so much as one person I know at a party of 50, I will likely spend my entire time there talking with that one person.


So, for me at least, neither Twitter nor the LoT nor any other form of internet communication negatively affects the Outsider ... who is simply going to have a difficult time of it. And that's, I think, just the general trend of society ... and group outsiders will have to work at it a bit if they want to become group insiders.


As for Twitter in particular ... I find it's not about what I thought it would be about. And that's been true for lot of 'net communitation modes.

Yeah, some people post about what they had for lunch. But I find it's often less trivial than that. And even more than the space-fillers that let you maintain a more constant flow of relationship with friends you seen often, I enjoy Twitter for keeping up with friends I see rarely. I have a few friends in Vegas who tweet, and I love the opportunity to keep up with them without having to reach out individually via phone or I.M., which I'm less likely to do. I wish more of my L.A. friends I see less often would take up the Twitter habit.

And as for friends I see often anyway, I don't see how it's different from certain real life situations, such as just happened over this weekend. A bunch of us went to dinner and show on Friday night, and just about all those same people attended all or part of a 12-hour brunch the next day. Although there was a sleep break in between, it felt as if it were one continous event. And I suppose Twitter can, in effect, similarly bridge face-to-face time to give folks the warm feeling of continuity. The LoT does the very same thing.


For someone who tends to write at length (witness this post as Exhibit "A"), I LOVE the enforced haiku of Twitter. It's not what I expected, and I have a hard time convincing people to give it a try.

But to each their own. I thought I'd dig Facebook, and I hate it. I doubted I'd get off on el jay, and I took to it like a duck to water. And, ya know, things change. I used to I.M. a whole lot, and now rarely ever. I used to post regularly on 3 or 4 message boards, and now it's just the LoT.


But the variety of what's available to socialize and communicate is fantastic, and I hope to see it grow.


Meanwhile, the general trend of the internet for me has been to find new friends, not exclude them. I trust the overall trend will continue, even if exclusionary bubbles appear from time to time.

[Not Afraid]

I'm finding I really like Twitter because I can get "caught up" on snipits of people's lives in a way that fits into my crazy schedule. I used to have more time to post on LoT and other message boards. Now, LoT is my only board and I miss a lot of stuff here because I simply don't have time to read.

I'm actually going to see if i can take Twitter to a creative level next week. Again, I don't have a lot of time for creative projects, but if i can fit a snipit of creativity into my twittering I may end up somewhat happier.

[LSPoorEeyorick]

I love the ease and overlap between tweeting and socializing. It's great for bringing small-talk to a more informed, intimate level. It happened to me all weekend, whether it was me bringing up a tweet, or someone else.

"Hey, ms.pod, how was your week? I saw you were working late a lot of those days - what cool project are you doing now?"

"Hey, NA, I saw your tweet about the bad Bossa Nova concert. Tell me more, because I can't imagine how you could kill Bossa Nova!"

"Hey, Commodore, tell us about Victor Garber!"

"Hey, LSPE, tell me about the plus-sized fashion party you went to!"

Now I know what my friends are up to, a garnered from very short bursts of communication, and it gives me the opportunity to start conversations (or be asked) about intriguing little tidbits of life that require more explanation. They're like tiny little mysteries and it's up to me to inquire more about them.

I still LJ. Probably about one chunky post every other week. Mine are usually more essay-based, because I prefer blog entries that are, you know, structured with an interesting skeleton. I must not be on your lists - or perhaps the more active LJers push mine down and away from sight. But one thing I don't do on LJ any more are my "blurt" posts, when I would post several sentence-long statements about things I'd been thinking about. Those are what Twitter was designed for.

[CoasterMatt]

I only twitter if I don't take my medicine ;)

[Alex]

Now I know what my friends are up to, a garnered from very short bursts of communication, and it gives me the opportunity to start conversations (or be asked) about intriguing little tidbits of life that require more explanation. They're like tiny little mysteries and it's up to me to inquire more about them.

I guess that might be one key difference. I don't see my online friends in real life all that often. So a tiny little mystery is going to remain a tiny little mystery.

[Moonliner]

All this sounds like a lot of work. I think I'm happy just not having any friends.

[Sohrshah]

Well, some people haven't even been invited to your friends list yet. :p

It amazes me how many people on LoT have LJs and I didn't know it!

[RStar]

I only twitter if I don't take my medicine ;)

He He, so do you get twitterpated??

[Kevy Baby]

It amazes me how many people on LoT have LJs and I didn't know it!I don't

In case you care

[scaeagles]

When I saw Erica we just picked up as if we had been seeing each other all this time.

I have often wondered how my life would be different should I have been in HS and college during this technological time. I had a pretty serious girlfriend in HS and was relegated to snail mail communication and seeing each other at Christmas and Spring Break. We grew apart rather quickly. I do wonder what might have been with her (and she wonders the same, as we still communicate) if we were 20 years later and our lives had each taken the same paths of being in different locations.

[Alex]

To a degree I can blame my first marriage on the very beginning of this technological age. We came out of high school, went to different schools, but were able to maintain daily contact via email and UNIX talk sessions.

Unfortunately the schools were close enough I could go up there often. But if it hadn't been for that constant contact I'm sure I would have allowed inertia to end it.