I was late to the party called Twitter and I'm still not enjoying it as much as I want. I'm struggling to make it part of my routine, even though I definitely see the value of it. There are a few problems I have with Twitter as I use it myself:

• It is yet another distraction on top of email, instant messaging and RSS. Another way to not be productive
• For that reason, the content in Twitter better be good for me to add this constant stream of information to my arsenal.
• Unfortunately, it is not. Not for me at least.

Allow me to explain. I think the signal/noise ratio is way off. It's not that the people I follow are not interesting. They're brilliant. It's just that the typical Twitter message I see lacks context. I may have little or nothing in common with the people I follow, so personal updates like "getting on to my flight to L.A.", "reading book X", "going out for lunch", and "I damaged my car" are of little interest to me. Things like that are only interesting when heared from my real life friends, and I prefer to hear those updates over a beer.

Then there is the constant stream of non-personal Tweets. Links mostly. Like I need more of that. And what else of any value can you post in 140 characters? Not much, exceptions aside. I did discover some jewels in Twitter but they surely are hard to find.

I'd like to add a philosophical dimension to it as well. Lately I have come to realize that there is much more value in producing something, learning something and offering something then there is in the mass consumption of information and overexposure to networking.

This is not to say that I dislike Twitter. I think it is brilliant and here to stay. I'm simply having a hard time giving it a place. Hopefully over time I will.

Yammer

Yammer is basically Twitter for companies. It works exactly like Twitter, the only difference is that you tweet and listen within a certain domain (@yourcompany.com) and only users with such an email address can join. We've been using it at work for a few months now and I love it. Here's why:

• Yammer has context. Since only employees of your company can join, you have a focused group.  You already have things in common.
• Since you are in such a focused group, the odds of discovering interesting content dramatically increases.
• Since you are in such a focused group, the odds of discovering interesting people dramatically increases. And unlike Twitter, there is a big change you can easily meet these people
• Since Yammer is mostly for companies, people will refrain from posting meaningless personal notes about their lunch, vehicle or pet. Messages are on topic and there is hardly any noise.
• Unlike Twitter, Yammer has no 140 character limit and you can even tweet attachments. No matter how brilliant people think the 140 char limit of Twitter is, I beg to differ. Raising the limit increases the depth and richness of conversations when applied to a focused group.

I am experiencing the Twitter signal/noise ratio as 5/95 and the Yammer signal/noise ratio as 60/40. Since the principles and tools behind both platforms are the same, the only explanation I can give to this reason is context. Without it, both conversations and information is meaningless.

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