"I agree about the potential for social websites to cause distraction and noise, but are you sure you're not attributing a little too much to the services themselves rather than your usage patterns? I didn't have a good experience on twitter until I followed a small number of smart people, almost all of whom I have met in person (at conferences etc) who post interesting insights that are relevant to my field. I check it every day or so and get a huge amount of value from it. FriendFeed can be far more overwhelming than twitter. For a while, I would get sucked in to public discussions, some of which lasted for days, and then I'd get burned out or realize I hadn't really gained anything. I learned to control who I follow with lists, and to use the email and IM features to let me know about posting from people (mostly close to me) who I don't want to miss. I have collaborated on a paid consulting project using a private FriendFeed room (and it's worked better than any tool I've used), and..." - Robin Barooah