On Flickr you can have chats with your group members, but tonight I was appreciating the old-fashioned groups with posts. Chat is cool - the immediacy gives it energy and other benefits. But, it's still a serial sort of experience - sometimes multi-serial if you play more than one chat at the same time.
But, the cool thing about groups with topics and posts is that you can randomly access them. This is where the freedom in space and time operates. If somebody interesting makes a thought-provoking, exciting or insightful post this a.m., when I'm busy, I can come by that evening and see it and reply or build on it.
From what I've seen, the quality is higher - thus to me more interesting. I might get lucky in a chat and have a good conversation live - that would be big fun. But if I'm willing to be patient and get subsequent responses later (I have to admit to wanting a response right away), I can participate in more interesting conversations more of the time. I feel like I have to keep checking on the chats to see if anyone interesting is around or if anything interesting is happening.
If I'm in a *good* chat conversation, I'm around anyway and will see if someone else comes into the *room*. But, I'm not necessarily willing to spend my time hanging out. It still feels like sitting at the bar to me - too slow for my taste. Guess I'm too much of a Type A for that. Fishing and baths have never appealed much to me either.
A new addition to the groups part of Flickr that really helps is that *hot* topics are listed in a narrow lefthand column and the current topic's posts in the larger righthand column. Once I've gotten up to date and posted or not, I can quickly scan for other topics of interest that are active. Topics that get posts go to the top of the list. It saves me clicks and I like it. Don't make me work too hard to get my mind candy and connection!
One thing that would add even more to the groups environment would be to list who in the group is online at that moment as well as who of my friends are online - make it easy for me to monitor whose online and lure me on. Make it easy for me to *score* when I do.
Finally, I have to say that Flickr is coming right along. After I complained on March 2nd that the staff seemed to be snoozing and schmoozing but not creating cool features that I could see, things started popping. They've been cranking out the new features lately. Here are my top four new features:
- Finding people by interests, books, movies, actors, music and artists
- Everyone's interests, favorite books, movies and music are links to everyone else with that same thing!
- I can see when someone was last on Flickr
- You can grab Flickr pics and post them to your blog. I like the concept this option reflects. Flickr isn't an island where you can't communicate elsewhere. It's designed with a whole world outside Flickr in mind.