Web 2.0 distractions?

Interesting article in this month's E&T (magazine of the Institution of Engineering and Technology) on web tools that are major distractions. The article, turn on, tune out caught my eye as it cites "Facebook, Twitter & blogs" as the one of the top 5 time wasters. Being new to blogging and Twitter, I'm not sure of the pros & cons but thought that trying them out is one way to find out!

I started using Facebook as a way of communicating with others in UCISA when we were planning a symposium. I got fed up with trying to do it via email. I wanted a single place where the latest information could be found. We also used a Facebook group for discussion during the event - reasonably successfully.

For the recent UCISA TLIG-SDG Conference we used WetPaint for discussion before & during the event. I'd like to see discussion continue on the WetPaint wiki after the event. I get a weekly digest emailed to me, so I get an email prompt of new posts. This is better than the Facebook messages about each & every friend request etc.

So, I can certainly see advantages but the problem I have is that each tool is another thing I need an account for and (unless I'm relying on the email prods) something else to check.

David Harrison, Chair of UCISA, recently discovered Twemes which brings together tweets, flickr and del.icio.us and he's added it to the conference WetPaint wiki. This looks good and certainly helps as it aggregates these different tools.

David also told me about Windows Live Writer which allows you to write blog posts offline and upload later. I'm using this now. Thanks David.

Back to the E&T article: I've never heard of two of the top 5 time wasters (Fark & Lolcats). So they're certainly not time wasters for me!