Whilst there is a lot of discussion around the ‘noise’ that social media technologies are creating, with talk of “super-contextualisation” or “information filtering”, a revelation has dawned on me. Whilst technology will have a very big part to play here in helping to focus content to individuals that is more relevant to them, let us not forget that a lot of this we have already: it’s all about the people baby.
I’ve noticed a big change in my online habits over the last 6 months in that in my quest for relevant information, I’ve moved away from my traditional feed reading tools and concentrated on my Twitter community. My connections to various people represent different interests of mine. Some of whom cover one subject, some more than one but all relevant to me in some way. What I have found through this transitional 6 months is that the stories that I would have historically paid more attention to, tend to permeate through into my Twitter stream though the various hooks into FriendFeed and other Twitter related sharing services.
Someone recently debated with me that this type of behaviour will only funnel things of interest to you and not allow for those tangential subjects to creep in, that will ultimately become more of a standard core interest. I disagreed as it is my relationship with individuals in the real world that exposes me to new things of interest, from the extremes of taking up flying power kites to gaining greater insight to the enterprise 2.0 culture shift.
I admit, that in my online world, there is an abundance of such initially peripheral subjects that I choose to follow but it is down to my own discipline and focus in choosing what to read further into or not. Consider it a filtered stream off the roaring river that is Social media.
What do you think?
Danny Baggs' Blog 