Tinkering and plunging

I admit that I'm often more of a tinkerer than a plunger when it comes to new technologies like Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and [insert your favorite web2.0 example].  I'm a tinkerer because I sign up for just about anything new that comes along, especially if I see it from one of my friends or others on my blog roll. But I just tinker with it, enough to get the basic idea, so I can be conversationally knowledgable about it if/when something becomes relevant later to my day job.

Plungers just jump right in, whole hog. They invite everyone they know, and then go crazy piling on dozens, maybe hundreds (or thousands) of friends, thinking they've discovered some new incredible way to automate what is fundamentally a one-on-one personal relationship-building process.

That's why I agree with sogrady at Redmonk who says:

[R]elationship volume and personal time are inversely proportional. As one rises, the other declines, more or less inevitably. In practical terms, this implies that the addition of relationships - be they personal, business or otherwise - unavoidably reduces the amount of time that you might allot to each.

So go ahead, add me to your Twitter feed if you like. I'll probably follow you and maybe learn something new about you in the process.  But ultimately I think I'm concluding that Twitter, like Facebook before it, is more of a fad.  It's being driven today by plungers, and once the next big cool thing comes along, they'll be on to something else.