Or you can just un-follow @sbellware for a few hours when there's a debate going and then re-follow when it has passed. :)

I agree with you about twitter, and I think it applies to facebook/myspace to a lesser extent. There is much more shouting than listening. Maybe its me, but I'm just not that interesting and don't care to comment on every common minute of my life. My interesting moments aren't even spent in front of a computer or electronic gadget.

I have found IM to be very useful, and often helpful in being productive.

I disagree that "nothing can supercede the quality of discussion face to face", especially regarding work conversations. How many times have you had a face-to-face conversation with someone about a project you're working on or a task that needs to be completed, and then three days later your understanding of what was decided during that conversation is significantly different than your co-worker's understanding of the same conversation, and there is no objective permanent record of the conversation to refer back to. As a result, you wind up having to repeat part of the discussion, which is not very efficient, and leads to people having inaccurate perceptions about their co-worker's reliability. Regardless of the cost of the medium, I think email is a much better medium than face-to-face for most work-related conversations.

From my personal perspective, I especially like being able to quickly search through email threads years after the fact and point out to my boss or client that they did not, in fact, accurately convey the details about a particular item that they are now fired up about and they're just SURE they told me exactly the way it needed to be (based on their flawed recollection). One should also consider the ramifications on issue tracking of their chosen communication mechanism, and I think email measures up favorably in this aspect as well. (Consider the case when an ongoing discussion needs to spontaneously become one or more cases in your issue tracking system after a few days of discussion.)

"Oh... I guess I was just thinking about that when I wrote this email, but I guess you're not psychic, are you?"

-freshly humble client/boss (time and time again)

I would disagree about the inability to participate in fruitful discussion through Twitter. If anything, it encourages you to Get To The Point. And it isn't a crime to split a line of reasoning that requires more than a sentence or two across multiple tweets, as @sbellware frequently illustrates.

Sorry Chuck but I disagree,

If Twitter encourages you to "Get To The Point" then surely, if you have exceeded 140 chars to emote your point then I'm afraid you've "Missed The Point".

Having a conversation over Twitter is fine, if each parties response is succinct and obvious. The beauty and weakness of SMS and twitter is that you can get a simple idea across quickly and cheaply. The weakness lies in lack of ability to easily provide context, background, and summary as is the strength of prose via email, or blogs.

Twitter asks you the question "What are you doing?" and I think you should answer that question as succinctly as possible, not complain about what other people are doing a la @sbellware.

@Jim,

By definition, discussion is "extended communication". Where there is an ability to direct remarks, as with @ replies, there will be discussion. To expect a full discussion to be carried out in two tweets-- one from each side-- is not realistic.

I say let the tweets flow. If people want to carry a discussion on Twitter's back all day long, great. Maybe Twitter /should/ better accommodate this. 140 characters is an arbitrary limit, whichever way you slice it. Twitter grew to accept @ replies to facilitate the answer to questions /beyond/ "What are you doing?"

I would say Twitter is far closer to IRC than it is to SMS.

Twitter may limit the size of individual remarks, but many people follow thousands of people-- volume is also a factor. When using Twitter like a firehose, your conversations tend naturally toward more fleeting and succinct responses. But when you use it more intimately, and follow relatively few individuals for which you have greater interest, you tend naturally toward more involved and drawn out conversation. I like that Twitter enables participation all along this spectrum.

"I would say Twitter is far closer to IRC"

Which is why I try to avoid it like the plague. IRC conversations could be entertaining but pretty much always shallow.

@Chuck,

"To expect a full discussion to be carried out in two tweets-- one from each side-- is not realistic."

I'm afraid you misread me, I did not intend to imply that a discussion couldn't be interleaved, or over a long period of time. My problem is that complex topics require complex answers and I think spanning an answer over multiple tweets is ineffective. Check my blog for a full answer.

Pat,

That happens, yes. But if I wanted to insure myself from that I would carry a recorder and backup conversations.

The wealth of information that can be expressed face to face is very hard to capture in other forms, even video conferencing is not the same.

If there is a need to have a record, you can have signed meeting notes. God knows that I have seen enough of those.

@jdn,

That is a somewhat unfair generalization.

I will say only that there is an IRC channel which has been one of my "third places" for over 13 years now. There is plenty of shallow and mindless conversation, but we are all good friends and many of us developers. I've come to meet and work with a number of them. Apart from chumming around and goofing off, it is also a place I go for camaraderie and insight from skilled peers.

@Jim

Please limit your responses explaining and defending Twitter to 140 characters or less. =P

Here's all anyone needs to know about Twitter: it blows. It's existence for the longer term (15+ years) relies entirely on the population gradually acquiring ADD.

novelty != ingenuity