The End of the Rainbow for Social Media, Spectacle or Solution?

I too find that turning data (the river) into information is difficult.

Lists help but, as you point out, people aren't always on topic and you ultimately have to sift through more and more noise.

Saved searches often work well, but then you may not be exposed to new and related topics. They might be too narrow.

FriendFeed's Friend of a Friend feature was/is the closest thing I've found to solving this problem. However, it takes a discipline that many in social media haven't embraced: follow fewer people.

I'm a Dunbar's Number proponent (though I don't use it for Twitter) and shape FriendFeed (home feed) and Buzz based on this principle. The key, particularly in FriendFeed is to use people as filters for specific topics. Find subject matter experts and use them to bring you the best on those topics.

I wrote about this last year: http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/soylent-green-i...

I still rely on Louis Gray, Rob Diana, Mike Fruchter, Atul Aurora and Mahendra to keep me on the cutting edge - and they do a great job.

Others provide the same service for different topics outside of technology. And you can't just set it and forget it. People change. Interests change.

It will be interesting to see if anyone can build a better mousetrap or convince people not to follow too many people.

Thanks for your input AJ, we're on the same wavelength. I'll check out your thoughts from last year.

Mark, if I have lost sight of anything it would be the rainbow and not social media. Whenever I enter any church I respectfully listen to the religion that is preached, why should any social media alter be any different?

I believe that it is a sign of adaptive growth when people customize technology to their own way. Conformity means we can all have a similar experience, but people who deviate from the system are usually undesirable, for whatever becomes free as a bird is hard to measure, harder to capitalize and also disruptive. Having said that the problem with variety in social media is both legacy and obsolescence.

To that end, if one wants to ensure that there is a continuity of social media application, social media has to be personal consideration as to the how and why of our own personal use (rather than a technology congregation).

That use includes backing up our own content on old media - but content isn't a big issue for me - the chief problem with social media as I see it is that the de facto meme is that we are using to publish and/or get our content read by others (as if this is the only way to use media).

I would not prescribe others to read what I write simply because I write to think and deconstruct. On the way I pick up intelligence on the travel by cause of accident not by cause of social media. Any one who is going to read what I write is simply out of respect, and here reading implies the gift of thinking rather than consuming.

One such accidental tourist is Dave Pinsen, I would never have thought about Spinoza on my online journey if he did not stand up and speak to his greater experience. On the way I learned that rigor is an essential trait in the make up of one's self-development.

I don't however want to become an identity of Twitter, or Buzz or even a clone of Dave Pinsen (only because I want to be free to flow than follow) - and more so because my cause is to discover emergence.

I think I have more or less stayed true to that journey but on the way there is the odd wake up call i.e. when I am so immersed in social media that I don't notice looking out of my window and just enjoying the appearance of a real rainbow.

If I can look at the beauty of social media as I enjoy a rainbow without attempting to describe it, I have got back to an emergent way. Yesterday I frequented through Ryan Grave's home and he used that lovely word "verbose" - (in a really good way).

That little interjection was yet another accident that I enjoyed playing with. Now I do realize emergent discovery does not involve rigor, but one way is to enjoy developing both i.e. the adaptive life and the rigorous life - and know when each is appropriate.

If I am focused fully on my path, I won't pay as much attention to Robert Scoble or a social media "star" - but I will notice Ryan Graves, Dave Pinsen, and some guy called Mark; as well as a multitude of voices that may or will merge into my own journey, no matter who they are or how brightly they might shine.

Do I then call this journey "a rainbow" or recognize that in the naming of things, some things just are and so let them be - so do I personally need a label called social media?

Only if I am here to sell it or turn it a personal branding machine. We are all selling something but when we speak what is in our hearts or mind, at the end of this particular rainbow is always the same thing in my opinion - a life well lived. "A life well lived" is emergent when it is alive or becomes a epitaph on our grave stone. I prefer it to be the former and so it is that verbose becomes a synonym for freeform play and free spirited interaction - but push it through the social media machine and it turns into "signal vs. noise". Let other people fight their own wars if they believe some holy principle of a media religion is being transgressed, because I am off to read Spinoza:

http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/3466...

... so my summary: as long as we are picking something on the way social media remains a synonym for "freedom" - *until that is, we either get labeled by it or our prescription is to live that label.

*And that ain't me bro :-)

[Em]

Alas you have seen how greedy I am with my time that I want to find wonderful information and ideas, but not have to read through all the unrelated stuff.

I also believe many others who don't yet enjoy social media as much as myself, could begin the exploration with the right tools. Thanks for reminding me of the importance in freedom when it comes to discovery and learning.

Everybody's time is a gift so one can never be greedy with time, the gift here is the home called victusspiritus that you have provided. I always go back to Douglas Adams when it comes to learn to love the internet:

http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

I am a nomad on the Internet, though I utilize AlwaysOn, I do so by making it my cave rather than my home, so freedom for me is different than if I had to maintain a cyberhome on the net. Maybe when there are more nomads like me, all this talk of tribe will be a virtue, rather than a migration to online cities such as Facebook.

I don't want to make the industrialization of the internet an issue, I simply want a space where I can think. People like you, Ryan Graves, the people on my Twitter account including the wonderful Liz Strauss - give me room to think and to be myself.

Being a web nomad also allows me to do something that the branded life cannot which is to disappear for a month, I wrote about this peace of mind today at AlwaysOn :

http://alwayson.goingon.com/permalink/post/34716

This means that I will be returning on 22nd April 2010 - a month away from the online space because I choose to, not because I am going on a vacation. A month away because using the net is no different to going to my kitchen. As Douglas Adams said so well what we are experiencing is a restoration. I think Adams would be a bit perplexed if he was still alive, that we have not understood his basic message over a decade after he has written it.

When the web becomes as normal as buying a house, it won't be about enjoying social media, but living with something that shouldn't even need a name - it should be that natural to the human condition.

See ya in April, in the meantime I lined myself some paper based books to indulge - (but I will sneak online to review the Spinoza work). The web blossoms when we are free to go to all parts of it, rather than directed to the cities. I am nomad and I sign off with my nomadic salute :

SEEEEEE YAAAAA SAME PLACE SAAAME CHANNEL IN APRIL !!!

Yes, Mark it is another dip into my intelligent silence because I need to have "Peace With Everything" :-)

[Em]

yup, information overload is a real problem !
Lists are good to organizing the people in a general area (friends/coworkers/random/design/coding and what not) but there needs to be a filter on top of those. You've got no idea how much I would love that ! I'm struggling as to how I can get rid of the political tweets in my timeline without actually unfollowing people....
In regards to twitter, a curation/filter tool based on the hashtags used ? altough not everyone uses # every time....
This problem seems like it is the cause to why some users don't engage on conversations.

irrelevant ps : batch reading done. off to bed :) Thank you for your posts mark !

Yeah, different levels of filtering is what I'm working on. Users can create feeds which can represent groups, but we do further processing on the stream I information by tag. Semantic or user supplied - still working out the details, but user supplied tags are generally good but biased towards one personal use of language. Community sourced tags would be best

Everyone has their own signal and interests, systems work differently for different people. Nobody is right or wrong with their approaches as long as it works for them. Hopefully with some trial and error, everyone learns how their mind works and which information tool/circles they can use to assist them.

Thanks for stopping by, and I so believe personalized filters are the best solution. I just don't feel that I have very good ones yet, so I keep my follow lists very small where I'm active (Twitter/buzz).

I'm probably only familiar with a tip of the social media ice berg, compared to you, but I am certainly aware of the information overload. The other issue with it -- and it's a related one -- is the lack of voice for minnows in the stream. Perhaps one solution would be some sort of algorithm that could scan click on embedded links in Twitter, for example, and assign them quality scores. Then people could screen out some minnow noise and get more minnow signal. And with fewer minnows, the minnows left would get a little bigger.