I am a huge user of twitter. I think it is a great way to spread the word about an event or breaking news, keeping up with your friends in little spurts (not long conversations), allows your relationships with others you might not have a daily presence with to grow and most of all its just fun!

” Microstreaming seems to have a different, flexible set of expectations for communication time associated with it.” ~ Larry Hawes

I deliberately labelled my post “Twitter: “Solipsistic” and or an Interesting Work Tool?” because I see too many people focusing on the egos using Twitter and not enough on the rapidly emerging implications of microblogging/information streaming technologies for the future of work. in organizations.

This summer I was priviliged to interview Stowe Boyd and produce his profile for “Inside Knowledge Magazine.” http://snurl.com/5ez4m Almost a decade after adding the term “social tools” to our lexicon in 1999, one of Stowe’s current foci is “workstreaming”.

I’d argue that when people look at Twitter what they need to be considering is what happens when more Tiwtter like tools enter the enterprise, as they are starting do? What are the implications for the way work gets done and skills needed to be effective?

I had a lot of material for the Stowe Boyd profile (as I reached out using social tools for input) but one of the nuggets Stowe offered was:

“we have moved from hierarchical, top-down, centralised work – (Henry Ford’s assembly lines or the pre-Internet global corporation) – to networked, bottom-up, edgewise work, personal productivity has been trumped by network productivity.” ~ Stowe Boyd

TheAppGap contributor and :”Net Work” author and Patti Anklam reinforced:
“…It will happen …that having a larger number of connections is more important at work than simply doing a job well .. …That is to say, the more connections you have the more resources you have to bring to a task: all work can be co-work.” ~ Patti Anklam

Am I reading too much into the potential impact of microblogging/workstreaming tools?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

For most of us, the key is limiting yourself to 5 to 15 minutes a day, otherwise you’ll never get any other work done. Twitter can be a real time sink. For customer service reps who monitor Twitter, of course they are spending much more time at it for good reason. But for the rest of us ….

The only sour note for me has been a temporary one — during this election season too many Twitterers want to cram their political views down your throat on Twitter, and it became tiresome. I think that’s a big mistake for businesspeople to do that. I’m in Ohio and I get enough of that crammed down my throat on TV ads, radio, local news stations covering this rally or that, etc. Ordinarily calm reasoned business people lost their common sense and became shrill over political issues on Twitter, and I think some will regret it.

But if the politics don’t go away after election day, I may have to re-think Twitter.

Anita