Great post Cameron, and plenty of reason to raise the subject right now. There must have been something about our meeting at RAL on Friday that sparked this because I too played with this yesterday in trying to "refine" my Twitter stream.

Using a tool like Tweetdeck you can "favourite" specific Tweets to come back to later or you can set up a column to watch the Tweets of a Group of Favourite People that you are following, but there's still no way to set them aside to review a whole complete conversation at a later date. I suspect this would lead us all into the trap that you highlighted, that unless it was really vital, most of us would never have time to "re-engage" anyway. Plus, with Twitter it works very much in the "real time" spectrum, as most of us know that have tried to get into an interesting conversation after it's gone off the boil!

Enter the greater flexibility of FriendFeed, where, as you rightly say, conversations can take place over minutes, hours or days, AND be grouped together, AND be searchable, thus enabling you to still make your relevant contribution at a time when it suits you.

Those of us who have become drawn into conversations, often more than one at a time, only to find hours have disappeared, then blame Twitter as a "time waster" can only endorse your point - we want to be involved in the conversation, but at our own preferred pace - hours or days may suit some, and may indeed suit the nature of the two-way exchange if it refers to results of an experiment or event which is spread over time.

If we want it personal and over & done with, yes we can pick up the phone, but a great many conversations on Twitter & FriendFeed can involve several people and lead to results or collaborations that were simply not anticipated when it all kicked off - that surely is what goo, global, networking is all about?

I maintain that Twitter is only a "Beta" because it relies on so many 3rd party apps to make it more useful. We have shown that we want and need this medium simply through the day-to-day take up & use thus far, but there is still plenty of mileage left in it.

I firmly believe the "all encompassing tool" will emerge which will enable us all to take part AND at our own pace AND in our own preferred fashion. I look forward to that day!