Friends Swap Twitters, and Frustration

WSJdpatton writes "The growth of services like Twitter and Dodgeball, which tie together instant messaging, social networking and wireless communication, elicits mixed feelings in the technology-savvy people who have been their early adopters. Fans say they are a good way to keep in touch with busy friends. But some users are starting to feel 'too' connected, as they grapple with check-in messages at odd hours, higher cellphone bills and the need to tell acquaintances to stop announcing what they're having for dinner."

Comments

Re:What's for dinner?

[ColdWetDog]

I know you can "only be young once, but you can be immature forever", however why do people want to be 15 year old girls for the rest of their lives?

Being a teenager once was quite enough, thank you.

And I'll take that pony now.

Re:Prior art

[HomelessInLaJolla]

I'm surprised that many web sites are given venture capital money and later, bought out. Just no good way to capitalize on a service that other people give away free You've just touched on the social psychology behind a pyramid scheme.

Everyone contributes, only a few profit. Lots of that venture capital came from tax money, lots more came from 401(k) investments where the people investing only knew their investments as conglomerate funds.

Pretty sad that it's allowed to continue this way.

Re:Stay Connected?

[TubeSteak]

I haven't even talked to my best friend in 3 days. I've gone months without talking to him, for no particular reason than I just didn't have anything of substance to say.

Did you become best friends with the guy by not talking to him for months at a time?

I doubt it.

Re:What's for dinner?

[TubeSteak]

Even if it wasn't a new service & the etiquette was still sortof working itself out.... I believe it might fall victim to the Eternal September which plagued Usenet.

Re:Stay Connected?

[Jekler]

I would say we became friends by not talking for long periods of time. Back when we were teenagers, we only talked on Thursday nights. That just meant we looked forward to meeting up instead of it being just another day.

I don't think constant communication fosters strong friendships, because you have little time to reflect on the importance of your relationship with them, and so little changes in a single day that the nature of the relationship becomes shallow and trivial. As they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Maybe only talking a few dozen times a year is a little too infrequent for most people. But checking in daily or even hourly (with something like Twitter) would seem more like a status report for a job rather than like the roots of a deep and meaningful friendship.