Filter or Die
Posted by Guillame Foutry @ April 17th, 2009 in Social Marketing
Social media has empowered people giving them the ability to compete with big organizations in terms of mobilizing people and spreading information throughout the web. But what has been a source of freedom and pleasure up to now, is starting to become annoying for a growing number of people.
The first problem is that we have registered ourselves in too many social networks and cannot cope with it. This has been solved by aggregation tools like Friendfeed or Digbsy. But that was just a short relief.
Because we have now reached a new stage of social media where a vast number of people online use social networks -all the time, in real-time, from wherever- we are literally bombarded with information, from everyday life issues to important pieces of news. This is information overload that is hard to handle, as Robert Scoble put it on his blog. He called it “Continuous partial inattention” as you cannot follow people and get things done properly. And this is what has invaded Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed (or will soon do it). So how does one not become insane with all of this?
As we wait for new tools/products to emerge, a temporary solution would be the use of filters. Filters gather a wide range of things: search based on keywords, hashtags or groups. One thing I have found very useful is the friend list on Facebook. I created several ones the minute they came out, and I can personally say they’ve really become a vital thing specially with the new design as the flow of information (or the way it is displayed now) makes it a bit harder to see what’s going on.
I’m very surprised Facebook and all the other social media out there have not yet created some kind of nice Google video on how to build filters and manage information overflow. This has become basic knowledge for social media users.
So I am wondering: what are the other filters out there? Do you have any recommendations? What do you use? Please share your insights with us. By giving us your filters, we will find you more easily, no matter where you are.
Last 5 posts in Social Marketing
- Twitter's Red Carpet Era- the real and the fake users - March 11th, 2010
- B2B companies increasing interactive marketing spend and using social media - March 4th, 2010
- Small businesses learn from the big guys and adopt social media - March 2nd, 2010
- Online social network advertising spending up, up, up - February 18th, 2010
- Social Media involvement and evolution - February 10th, 2010
Comments
Luciano Lombardi
April 17th, 2009
prova