Streaming Social

I am going to spend a little time familiarizing myself with this new phenomenon. Yes, I know that in Internet time it isn't exactly new, but OTOH as someone who first sent an IM and first entered a chatroom in 1993 and spent a good part of the '90's in chatrooms and sending IMs I think I am capable of seeing Twitter, Friendfeed, Seesmic, and the other streams as more of the same, just better and faster. I have resisted this trend for the same reason that I abandoned chatrooms around the turn of the century. I began feeling that although chatrooms and IMs were very exciting and occasionally tuned me into things much sooner than I otherwise might have learned, they were also highly time consuming and sometimes obligated me to friends and strangers in ways that I would have preferred to avoid.

Now I don't want to begin psychoanalyzing myself and my social connections here on my blog, let's just say I'm not close enough to anyone using these services to make it worthwhile getting involved with them. But the phenomenon is getting big and while I don't want to make this my entire life the way IM's and chatrooms almost became, I don't want to be left behind not knowing what's going on either. So I'm going to research this some more and grab ahold of some of the vision that I left behind when I largely abandoned this type of communications eight years ago.

No, I don't think I'll begin Twittering and tweeting. Call me old fashioned if you like, I don't think I like that pace. I have complete control of my own life and answer to no one, and though some might find that lonely I call the open options empowering. I'm fine, just curious. :)