Slate's Paul Boutin lauds Friendfeed because it's not as demanding as all of those other Web 2.0 applications:

No, I don't want to use Twitter. I'm way too busy—and, let's be honest, too uninterested (and uninteresting)—to spend all day thumb-typing status updates from my cell phone. That's the problem with Web 2.0 services like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, and the rest: They expect me to eagerly upload, type, click, and tweet my life onto the Internet so these tidbits can be served to others. What I really want is to be able to reap the advantages of these sites without having to lift a finger—to see what my friends are up to without having to write anything myself.

Let's set aside one strange contradiction: Boutin has no time to "thumb-type" his status, but he does have time to follow his friends on Plurk, Twitter, and Flickr. No, this isn't really what interests me about Boutin's discussion (though, I do think it's worth pausing over). What does interest me is the discussion of Twitter and other tools as nagging and as requiring too much time and effort. At first, I read this complaint as tongue-in-cheek, but latter in his review of Friendfeed Boutin says this:

There are two things that separate FriendFeed from the rest of the Web 2.0 pack. First, it doesn't presume I've come to the Internet to get attention rather than pay attention. The site doesn't barrage me with requests to subscribe, upload, or share my own content. Second, it's geared toward one-way relationships rather than the two-way electronic "friendships" you're stuck with on Facebook or MySpace.

The "information overload" narrative is at work here. Boutin is "barraged" by a service that "presumes" that he wants to get attention. A couple of things are interesting here:

1) I would argue (along with others) that the current state of "information overload" is not a new problem but is rather a very old problem brought into relief by new technologies. Fewer media channels may have allowed us to assume (presume?) that we had our information flows under control, but that doesn't mean that we actually did have things under control.

2) Boutin's distinction between getting attention and paying attention is an important one. Though I'm still not sure how Twitter or any other Web 2.0 app forces anyone into "get attention" mode (you can sign up to follow other users and then never post updates), I do think that most discussions of Web 2.0 leave aside the question of those who don't want the attention.

This latter point is the focus of the current dissertation chapter I'm working on. When rhetoricians like Richard Lanham argue that rhetoric (more specifically, style) is a way of getting attention, they're absolutely correct. But what do rhetoric and rhetoricians have to say about situations where one is getting unwanted attention. My case study is Wikipedia's Biographies of Living Persons policy - a policy that attempts to deal with those who don't want the attention that an article on Wikipedia brings.