how many of you like FACEBOOK ?

[robin]

same as msn - no need to block it. its a contacts list.
if the folk you work with cant do their work - then thats a different problem.

They can do their work, but FB is the most intrusive of these technologies, in my opinion and thus tempts them to ponder what Fred posted about Jane's raspberry jam recipe rather too often; you might think that the MSN-type things would be worse (and perhaps they were before FB), but FB has some sort of chain reaction that seems to cause a cycle of activity.

I don't like censorship and I don't ban stuff; of course eventually I'll address the FB time wasting if it doesn't sort itself out, but not by banning it.

I cannot accept that MSN/FB are the way in which you should communicate about work stuff. If it requires the immediacy of a conversation, make a telephone call. If it doesn't, then send an email. Telephone makes for effective conversations. Email is the absolute king at offline store-and-forward messaging that allows people to prioritize how they will deal with the requests for their time. Everything else is a compromise in one respect or another.

Cheers,
Robin

P.S. I was thinking of this one: http://failbook.failblog.org/ but of course lamebook might be the same thing under the hood.

[S111Y TT]

Oh no! Robin now that I have started on that link I am now going to be up very late looking through it. Nightmare.

[robin]

This one is epic (more the commentary - there are some genuinely witty people in amongst the usual nonsense).

http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/04/09 ... -lab-love/

Cheers,
Robin

[Ferg]

I cannot accept that MSN/FB are the way in which you should communicate about work stuff. If it requires the immediacy of a conversation, make a telephone call.

Interestingly we have an internal messaging system (office communicator) which does actually add to the communication fabric of the organisation. In a world where poeple are comfortable with the medium, I suppose embracing it increases productivity to some extent. You could argue it's a way to comunicate that isn't weighed down by the non-imediacy of email and exists for sheer circumvention of the Do-Not-Disturb button.

[S111Y TT]

This one is epic (more the commentary - there are some genuinely witty people in amongst the usual nonsense).

http://failbook.failblog.org/2011/04/09 ... -lab-love/

Cheers,
Robin

I would feel bad for reading every comment posted if the majority of them were not so hilarious. Some great lines in there. They should group together and work on a few sketches. Genius. Thanks Robin!

[scottishselise]

I cannot accept that MSN/FB are the way in which you should communicate about work stuff. If it requires the immediacy of a conversation, make a telephone call. If it doesn't, then send an email. Telephone makes for effective conversations. Email is the absolute king at offline store-and-forward messaging that allows people to prioritize how they will deal with the requests for their time. Everything else is a compromise in one respect or another.

Cheers,
Robin

P.S. I was thinking of this one: http://failbook.failblog.org/ but of course lamebook might be the same thing under the hood.

In many offices in Aberdeen that deal with rigs, e-mail is often used for urgent requests etc - depends on the job of course.
I take your point, but it seems to work the other way here. Obviously, telephones are the only way to make sure they understand the purpose of what's required there and then, but most things can wait 15-30 mins in terms of "read receipt", or a "follow up alert".

[scott_e]

Just a quick post to say thank you for the replies, made for some interesting reading and the results of the poll were closer than expected. Really did think i was in the minority. All the best.

[PhilA]

interesting thing about phone calls - if noone there to answer, or they are busy, then you get no connection and they dont get the message.
if they have a voicemail, then that means the message is there for them.

with email, even if the email servers are down, the email will reach eventually.

this sort of message reliability was what i sought when architecting a software system last year - and I found SQL Server Service Broker - its an awesome messaging system.
really worth using if you need reliabiliy in some software communication sometime.

</geek>