Maybe you were born batty...

What solutions can you bring/develop....in terms of technology that can make SOME people's lives even a little bit better?

HELP us...we are being destroyed, the economy is failing with the use of Facebook and Twitter....including Gwave (awesome as it is..). 

WHAT SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE or Communication Medium do you not dislike aside from email...

You rant for the sake of it and promote your business too - who wants it?  :-)  Why not just assume that people simply use these clients because they want to risk being fired and love the risk.... Most people I would guess don't even like their damn jobs. They work to survive. We all know it. When a percentage of the global population owns 40% of global wealth = what can you expect of people's "independent" actions and their ongoing mental conditioning.

With such a scrutinizing world we are beginning to live in, I pity people because all their lives are now on the web...stored on some computer (the Beast) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=THE+BEAST+COMPUTER&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g3g-s1g-sx2g1g-sx2

For the record, GoogleWave makes my life easier....it has great current features (robots, gadgets, synchronous communication, integration of twitter etc..). If I could use one app to do what all the all the others do (email, video chat, text chat (IM), "tweet") then  I really look forward to it.

 "wave good bye"

 Joe 

Abu Dhabi 

check out http://www.manictime.com/ for tracking all the applications

good post!

Twitter and IM I have always hated and find useless for the reasons you describe. 

Facebook I have found is a great way to rapidly exchange contact information and smooth out the friend-making process with new acquaintances - just contact them through your social circles after a party rather than asking for email, phone etc. at the party. It is also the easiest service to use for large cc invites like parties - the graphical interface is simply a step up over email and the prebuilt list is an advantage over evite etc. It is also a good way to keep tabs on old friends, or, if you don't want to make that level of effort, to maintain current contact information with them.

At least this is the case if you're in your 20's and absolutely everyone else is also on the service; maybe you're in a demographic where that's not the case, and then I could see it being worthless.  It is completely useless for work, and I move all conversations off facebook to email as soon as I can.

 I am hoping Google Wave will swallow email, twitter, IM, and facebook, and become the dominant platform for forums, blogs, and especially high-detail wikis.  I don't think it's there yet, but it has the potential.

I for one have never signed up for facebook, twitter, google wave, or any of those other stupid apps. I don't even IM. No Skype or vonage or any of those other things either. I did start contributing to a new blog along with a few others recently.  I am on LinkedIn though, I mostly use that as a glorified address book.I do host my own email though, on my own physical server at a local co-location facility.

Email or phone call(real cell phone) is how to get in touch with me. I don't even have a smartphone, just a regular phone. I don't read email on my phone. I had a blackberry at my last company and for sure prefer not having one.

I am thinking about getting a Palm Pre/Pixi though to run some of my older palm apps, really no other reason other than that though.

 Oh and I don't "text"/SMS either.

nate

I manage the cell phones for my company and everyone wants SMS so "they can text customers"

Bullpucky!

Little do they know that our blackberry server logs all SMS messages I would say less than 4% of all sms messages are work related.

So, your thesis is that efficientcy is laziness.

Okay.

What I LOVE is that this rant about twitter was linked from, TWITTER!  Priceless.

BTW, I agree... Email is still the #1 method of communication.

 - Andy Paul

http://sbcengine.blogspot.com/ 

Doug, I have a thought provoking comment to add here but I thought I'd just send you a direct tweet instead....

 Jason E. Smith

Fully agree. Email, IM is more than enough. Specially with iPhones and Blackberries.

Thanks for pointing this, there;s so much hype with Twitter that people are shy to criticize it ! Twitter SUCKS big, and is for people with plenty of free and useless time.

For simple messages, email is fine. I use it everyday too.

The big problem is when people start to use it as a business collarboration tool. When a single document is attached, it suddenly has become cloned and everybody has a copy.. then people modify it, reply, or forward it.. you can easily imagine it getting out of hand (and I've seen it happen too). Its a version control problem!

The other problem is people believe it to be an instant messenger service, and expect it to interrupt your workflow with their request, urgent or not. Truth is, I often close my email program to concentrate on tasks that don't require emails.

Then there are those who expect that if they sent you an email, you've seen, read, digested and accepted it .

The advantages are that for asynchronous notifications a distribution list its fantastic, it is persistant and searchable. For conversations that are not time-dependant the same applies.

Each of these communication tools have their usages. Sometimes their usage is time-suck. But the reality is that if you can't see a benefit for your time and effort, GTFO. Personally, I have great plans for Google wave in the collaboration space. I can see how it can work for me, and I'm using it as such.

I'm aware that people are using twitter as a marketing tool (with various success - I'm not talking about spammers here), but the more successful of those are receivers as well as broadcasters. I've considered using in this way too, mostly to promote my blog posts to those who are interested in the topics.

So I guess my point is that there are ways of making each of these tools work for you, and if they don't work for you, don't complain about it, just don't use it!

Well said.

 Isaac

TEl Aviv, ISrael