My answer to that question and to the broader use to me of Twitter lies in the concept of social filtering...It's certainly possible that I might miss The Greatest Blog Post in the World - but it's not likely because of the way social filtering works
We’re Gonna Need a Better Filter This is where a better technology strategy comes into play. Clay Shirky put it best when he said that “ information overload is filter failure
By limiting the number of voices and the amount of data coming into their networks, they lose the ability to filter those voices and find new ideas, new innovations...The answer is to create better filters
However, he also points out the limitations of this method, requiring filtering of groups. Tools like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite, while providing some degree of filtering of messages received and of those sent
But let me start with the positive developments, which are many and may stick for good: It was never so simple to tag a subject and filter by it...The reason I thought that way is because there is too much noise to be able to filter what is really relevant
On the surface, the ability to parse and filter your networks, creating targeted groups around specific topics, seems to fall in line with the points made in the article about the importance of limiting the size of your networks to get the most value out of them, or at least to enable you to refine your networks and focus on those relationships that will provide the greatest ROI (personally, professionally, spiritually, whatever)
Our keynote speaker Clay Shirky thinks it is not an information overload problem, it’s filter failure
A very simple lifecycle of information might include the ability to easily publish content (somewhere), discover, connect, subscribe, aggregate, filter, consume, and share
We will receive hundreds of them and delete 90%, either automatically through spam filtering capabilities or manually, but it will be barely used for collaboration, innovation and exchange of ideas. 96% of the e-mails sent to serious corporations never reach our inbox. They are filtered by an anti-spam tool long before they even get to us
There's just a greater need for organization, for filtering through irrelevant material