Out of office (or in Microsoft speak OOF – for Out Of Facility) messages for email are the new answering machine messages. But different people use them differently. For example, I sent out an email to four co-workers today. Three of those accounts replied with an OOF message. The interesting thing is that all four people are at the same off-site event with the same access to email. And yet one person didn’t set up an OOF message. It’s not because he doesn’t do so – he does – but (I think) that he has a different view of what being away means.

That’s pretty common. I have received messages from people who are in their office and working on the computer but have decided to focus hard on a specific task and ignore email for the day. And yet I know other people who always ignore email except for one specific period of the day without feeling the need to set up an automatic message. Some people will set up a message if they will be off email for a single day. Others will not unless they will be away for several days or longer. I’ve had messages from people who typically take days or weeks to reply to most email that say that “today they are not in the Internet” as if somehow it will make a real difference.

I have heard of people who set up an OOF message during lunch breaks. What? No really. Once I set up an OOF message saying that I was taking the weekend off and that I would reply to email on Monday. Several people found that amusing. Others expressed concern about people who bring work into the weekend. Ironic as they had seen the message because they sent me work related email on the weekend.

Most of the time I keep my OOF messages short and serious. And I tend not to use them unless I am on vacation or really not going to be able to keep up with email. Being on a cruise ship for example. I have a vacation coming up – we’re going to Disney World. I am tempted to have a message that says something like “leave me alone unless you have something more fun than Disney World in mind.” That should keep most follow ups away. But of course I will not do that. I’ll have the usual “out of the office and away from email” with a connection to my manager in case of an emergency.

But you know the sad thing? I’ll probably be reading much of my email while I am away. Just not as often.

The friend of my friend is my friend, the enemy of my enemy is my enemy? Well one might think so. But in actual fact, at least in most of the western world, we pick our friends and foes largely independently. If a friend recommends someone they know we give that a lot of weight of course. And we tend to take our friend's side against strangers as well. But we don't assume that friendship is automatically transferable.

What brought this on? Well Facebook has a new feature called "People You May Know" that lists people in Facebook who are friends (at least in the Facebook sense) with two or more of your Facebook friends. LinkedIn, the older more professional networking site, has a similar feature. There I think the connections can be even more tenuous though.

I love looking through these lists. Often I do find people I know and think of as friends and these sites allow me to easily establish a connection in their network. I have re-connected with a number of "long lost friends" that way. More often though I ether don't know the person at all or I know who they are but don't really know them. On Facebook the other large category is former students. I know them and I feel friendly toward them but as a matter of personal policy I don't bug them with friend invitations. I do accept them happily if they extend the invitation my way.

Often I am very impressed with the people my friends know. Honestly sometimes I'm impressed with the people I know and who have accepted or even extended friend invitations to me. But some of the people my friends know are the sort of people I'd be too shy about approaching in most situations. I'm clearly not ready to send them friend invitations. That is just not how I see those sorts of networking sites. Though I know others see them differently. Even I get lots of invitations from people I know nothing about. I feel awkward turning them down but I'd feel more awkward accepting them. But that may just be me.

Coming back to the people I know, at least by reputation, but who do not know me - I can imagine cases where I might ask a friend for an introduction. or if I were to meet them in real life I might drop the friend's name to help establish a connection. But I'm not going to just send them something like "I know Joe and Joe knows you so will you be my friend" out of the blue and with no good reason. I am not into collecting pseudo friends for the sake of a large list.

I will admit though that looking at lists of people my friends know is interesting. Maybe I'm nosey or maybe I just like seeing connections. In ether case these applications make these networking sites more interesting and useful for me.

I think Twitter is starting to make sense to me. It's fun and interesting but for me I don't think it will take the place of blogging anytime soon. Though honestly I don't think that is the case for everyone.

I see some benefits to following a lot of people and some benefits to having a lot of people follow you.  The benefit of following a lot of people is that you can pick up a lot of interesting news and information. You can also be a part of some interesting conversations among diverse groups of people. It can however be quite a time sink. How people who follow thousands of people (and there are a good number of them) can keep up and separate the heat from the light I do not understand. I'm following about 75 people right now. Some of them hardly update at all. Some of them (Guy Kawasaki and Robert Scoble to name two) can post quite a bit; often in a short time.

The people I follow who post often post a lot of interesting things. I have looked at some people who post a lot but whose posts I find less interesting. I have chosen to follow people who are interesting to me either because of my relationship to them or because they post things of interest to me. Not everyone is that picky and I can only assume they are getting different things of value to them. Am I missing some things by limiting myself? Probably but at the same time I don't have enough time to use all the data I get as is is.

The value from having followers comes in several forms. The most obvious and shallow shallow is ego gratification. With about 80 followers Twitter is not going to be a huge boost to my ego. Not when there are people with thousands and tens of thousands of followers out there. Its not a goal for me either. I am pleased that friends of mine are following me. I am intrigued, amused and a mite bewildered that people I know nothing about and who probably know nothing about me are following me. Some of them are following thousands of people so I guess they are the type who are good at separating the heat from light. More power to them and I hope the get some value from my Tweets.

The more serious value from having followers is the serendipitous conversations and interactions that can take place. For example last week I wrote an update that I was heading to a gathering. One of the people who follows me (and whom I follow) sent me a reply asking if he could join me. As a result we have a pleasant evening that we might not otherwise have had. And then there is the possibilities of people answering questions. People one knows or people one doesn't know. One can toss a question out and get answers from unexpected places/people. I hear lots of stories of impromptu real life meetings as well and blog ideas, business ideas and who knows what else.

For example, Guy Kawasaki seems to be building Alltop.com largely from Twitter conversations. This seems to be from both following and being followed. The fact that he is so open to conversation on Twitter is no doubt earning him more fans all the time as well. In any case I believe it is making that site a lot better and more useful in a shorter period of time then it might otherwise become. BTW Scoble is also sending a lot of replies to the people he follows. I have no doubt that it is leading to good things for him as well. He has a business that requires lots of contacts and word of mouth. Twitter is nothing if not contacts and word of mouth.

In fact the way to get the most out of Twitter is not just, as Scoble says, to follow a lot of people but to converse with a lot of people. Since Twitter lets one reply specifically to individuals but have the message go out to all followers it is obvious who is listening seriously enough to learn and converse (one can't reply without first listening). Sending a reply broadens the conversation, connects more people to each other and is really a sort of "force multiplier" of Twitter value. Following a lot of people is good but having a lot of conversations is great.

Listen to people, ask questions of people, answer questions others ask - in short - participate in conversation. Lots of followers or few; following many or following few; I'm not sure it matters as much as conversing with the people in the circle. One may get into more conversations if the circle is larger and if one really wants to get the most value possible then following more people will do that. If nothing else it will lead to getting more followers and creating more opportunities for more conversations.

The reason Twitter will not replace blogging for me is because I am too long winded. I like to express myself at length and 140 characters doesn't do it for me. If I were the sort whose posts were just links or pointers or short snippets it might be enough. But that is not me. So for me Twitter is something else. Something interesting, sometimes useful, often fun but still something else.

I haven't seen many kids on Twitter. I've brought up Twitter several times before groups of high school and middle school students and for the most part they have never heard of it. I'd sort of thought that since Twitter was so much like IM that students would be all over it. But it appears not. This seems strange to me.

I have seen really only a couple of cases of teachers using Twitter in their classes. (Most recently here) It appears that teachers are introducing it as something new to their students. Most teachers are learning most things about Web 2.0 from their students. But Twitter is working the other way around.

Anyone have any insights into this? Am I just talking to the wrong students?