Likeminds – there’s too much noise
Sunday, February 28, 2010 by Stewart Baines
My apprehensions about the #Likeminds social media event was that it would be a love-in among insincere folk selling sincerity services. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Nearly all of the people I met over the course of two days in Exeter were genuine, enthusiastic and passionate about social media.
And I learned a lot from the sessions – about Chris Brogan’s jealous Followers that need regular loving, to Olivier Blanchard’s discovery of disconnected organisations that are listening to social media but unable to channel listening into doing; and debates about the future of journalism, paywalls, bloggers and brand advocates.
And the networking and discourse (a true Socratic symopsium?) at an event like this was far more informative and vibrant than any of the hundreds of technology conferences I have attended in my working life.
But the lasting thoughts that I left with is that of noise and the inability to filter it out. Every moment of the Likeminds event was caught on iphone camera, on Kodak Zi8 and of course the ubiquitous Twitter tap tap tapping. A multiverse of content was generated on this most sociable of days. Ok, as a consumer of this data (rather than producer) I can dip in an out.
But how much juicy content am I missing? Fear of this, and a desperate desire to taste everything, as it happens, means that I am monitoring social media streams 24/7.
It has to stop. The noise has to be filtered out somehow.
The future of publishing, of blogging, of social media, will depend on some way to filter.
I’m thinking about how I can do this with my own work – Futurity produces up to 1000 articles are year, with ideas inspired from a vast array of sources. I need to organise and filter this, and in doing so, capture underlying trends.
When I trained in Futurology (a dumb term, I know), we learned how to think slowly, see real changes behind the vapid. But it’s getting harder to do this since the advent of the social media. So how can we learn to filter?
Your thoughts please?
#stewartbaines
Scott Gould says on February 28th, 2010 at 2:20 am :
Hey Stewart
Our aim was to create a platform for curation that would reduce the noise and keep the best stuff in one place – but we didn’t have the resources to do it this time.
You’re totally right tho. The way I see this is through curation. You can’t stop people making media – but you can curate it to reduce noise.
I totally agree.
Stewart Baines says on February 28th, 2010 at 2:33 am :
Indeed, I think the interesting people were not distracted by the need to broadcast everything. I’m not criticising the event production (apologies, it’s just a cheap shot of a headline, it comes from a long history in journalism), which I thought was excellent. It just reminded me that the living in the present, where there is a constant feed of content, is making it very hard for me to see what’s happening in the future. Chris Brogan seems to have picked up on this in his AnyWhen post.
So no Scott, not a criticism of Likeminds, which i thought was a fabulous event, and fantastic to meet loads of local digital businesses as well as the industry sages.
Scott Gould says on February 28th, 2010 at 2:41 am :
Hey
Didn’t consider it a critcism at all :-)
We seriously (all of us Social media guys) need to do something about this noise
Gabrielle Laine-Peters says on February 28th, 2010 at 3:03 am :
“The noise has to be filtered out somehow”
” But how much juicy content am I missing? Fear of this, and a desperate desire to taste everything, as it happens”
You open with high praise indeed in your first 3 paragraphs. Glad that you also had some negatives. I agree with the noise issue, we all filter noise in our own ways. We all judge noise to be different things, I’m sure. The second sentence I picked out is very telling though. Not only to be in the loop constantly but also in real time or as near as. An impossible goal I would say. Your juicy content could be my noise.
Step back, it’s not all important, I can’t be. Some people will have something to say, original & thought provoking, observant or just plain funny! Trust your instincts.
My way of filtering #LikeMinds this week, the build up, the day & the follow-up may interest you ( it may not!)
1. Lists – Speakers, Connections (Tweeters signed up to attend), general (Tweeters using the hash tag not on the other 2 lists)
2. Just watched or “listened” for a day or two & lists find there own level. Informers, Broadcasters, Echo’s , Originators & Engaged . Thankfully some people fall into more than one group “result”. IMHO Broadcasters & Echo’s can be deleted. Engage, talk about your views, ask questions, respond to reply’s
3. Edit out & down to people giving the kind of feed you want to hear (not always agree with either,balance is good)
4. Don’t turn it into a quest, dip in & out.
5. I’ve been doing this in different forms for years. Find trusted sources, the info. you’re fed is Sound, not Noise, relevant info. will filter through/down.
I’ve gone on long enough. Good luck with keeping up – but don’t try keeping up with the Jones… there lies the road to frustration.
@GabrielleNYC – Panelist #LikeMinds (Not part of “the management”)
Trey Pennington says on February 28th, 2010 at 3:21 am :
Stewart, thanks for being a part of Like Minds and taking the time to share your thoughts. (and, unlike what happens at many conferences, “being” a part of Like Minds is a “continuous action” and not a “one time event.”
I wanted to soak up as much of Like Minds (the event AND the people) as I possibly could. After two full days (I’ve lost track of British time; I think it’s after 3:00am now, so that’s about as full a day as one can get), I’m still hungry for more. The richness of the people here is beyond measure.
Believe it or not, I am IN SEARCH of more right now! I want to find more flickr galleries, am dying for Christian Payne to post his second and third and ALL his video content, can’t wait to see the cool content Lesanto captured, and then there’s all the stuff Wide Eye created, and THEN I want to watch all the presentations! The only one I saw was Brogan’s. The rest of the time I was face-to-face with one or a group of Like Minds people, asking questions, taking notes (via video), and soaking it in.
There’s a ton of content. Cool thing is, Like Minds people are archiving it so we all can drink it in at our own pace. My hunch is, even with all the marvelous and voluminous content now, we all will be ready for the next thing Like Minds has planned!
I’m hoping to spend some time with you next time!
Suraj Gogoi says on February 28th, 2010 at 9:16 am :
Hi Stewart
I agree with you that we need to filter out the noise in social media from relevant, actionable information. I don’t believe monitoring social media 24/7 ever can be a good idea at all. I think the quality of information largely depends on seeking answers to the specific questions we might have. As Scott has said content curation is one step in that direction, I agree.
Is there any value for “just-in-case” type of information, I don’t think there is, but that could be just me.
Gemma Went says on February 28th, 2010 at 10:39 am :
Stewart, good to meet you briefly at Likeminds. I agree, there is so much great content to consume we can’t possibly take it all in, so filters are necessary. As Scott so eloquently puts it, we’re our own content curators and working out how to do that efficiently is key. I also think it’s a case of finding a bit of balance, accept you can’t soak it all up and make the most of what you do consume. There are a couple ways I manage this myself:
1. My RSS feed is my own personal news channel. Im very picky which feeds I subscribe to and review this regularly. These are the only sites I read daily. The reader allows me to scan through the headlines and pick out what interests me from hand picked bloggers and editors I know are worth the time and effort. I use this both on my iphone and laptop.
2. Twitter can be the biggest noise provider of all social channels, but Tweetdeck helps me to create subject and people focused columns that I can scan through and read through the lists or search function. The filter function at the bottom of the column is also a great help for that. I also love Twitter search on the web to find the subjects I’m interested in.
I also value the art of skim reading. Dipping in and out of the noise and delving further into the stuff that’s relevant to you.
I do think there’s an opportunity here for a much smarter way of filtering the wide range of content available to us through the various channels, maybe some bright Likeminds attendee is working on it right now.
Stewart Baines says on February 28th, 2010 at 11:40 am :
Thanks Trey – I agree, I do need more because the devil is buried in the detail.
I’ve notices there’s loads of pics uploaded to Flickr tagged likeminds: http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=likeminds&s=rec
Documentally on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-TU3oVBzTc
And there’s a Kevin Anderson review of Joanna Jacobs pres on AR: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/feb/26/mobilephones-mobile
See you next time.
Trey Pennington says on February 28th, 2010 at 12:26 pm :
Love it. Thank you for the additional links!
Joanne Jacobs says on March 3rd, 2010 at 4:07 pm :
*grins* Totally know what you mean re too much noise. But I’m not going to tell you just to disconnect because that would be simplistic. All the tools and advice listed in comments above are useful, but there’s something else you do need to accept:
It’s okay not to read everything.
It’s the nature of the technology: if you really ought to hear something juicy, you probably will end up hearing it anyway eventually. And if it’s not worth repeating (noise), then it won’t get repeated. Of course this isn’t always true. Sometimes noise does get repeated but there are other strategies for that too.
Just to share, for twitter I tend to use one application (seesmic or dabr on my mobile) for posting, and I use Tweetdeck for reading. I delete all the standard columns on tweetdeck because I can follow my friend and @replies on seesmic. I just set up columns following whatever keyword or brand or hashtag that takes my fancy on any day. I get far more from following ideas this way; I’m not just seeing the same people retweeting the same stuff. And for keywords I’m really interested in, I whack the entire RSS feed of a search term through Yahoo pipes, getting rid of all retweets and @replies, and generating a new feed that is all content. And I can even tweak the pipe to get rid of anyone I think is less valuable. It’s very, very golden.
As for blogs etc, I use iGoogle for my reader and just drag in RSS feeds from all over, categories by tab. And I browse these daily. Then I use http://blogsearch.google.com/ again for keywords, probably doing a proper search once every couple of days (but given my business is based on that, it’s obligatory; how often you scan is entirely up to you).
But I still think it’s true to say that value comes from useful interaction at a time that is convenient for *you*. And disconnecting for a bit doesn’t mean you’re ignoring people or missing stuff. It just means you have other stuff to do.
So forgive yourself for not hearing everything, and try any of the above methods to cut down the noise. They all work, and you can still get stuff done :)
Stewart Baines says on March 4th, 2010 at 8:46 pm :
Hi Joanne, I agree you have to be able to drop out and drop in again without the Singularity happening while you were away (the point where science & technological innovation happens so quickly we become detached from it).
Coincidentally Vernor Vinge, who devised the Singularity concept in a cultural context, also writes sci-fi, and he writes of future schools that only teach pupils the art of Search, as if it is the only life skill they will even need. (In the excellent Rainbow’s End)
So how will they know truth from rubbish in the cacophony (btw, this isn’t a debate over the nature of truth)? So much content is a retweet, or link journalism. It’s so hard to track down the source, and in a rush to add comments to blogs etc we use terms and slogans we don’t understand, or repeat facts incorrectly – such as claiming the iPhone is the best selling smartphone in the US ;)
There’s an interesting debate over at Jay Rosen’s blog (http://tinyurl.com/yhxpsn7)
about the The Wisdom of Crowds, or more precisely our need to use the term inappropriately without actually having read the book. He believes in citations, bookmarks, facts, evidence and veracity and how memes grow from distortions.
So plug those things in together – inability to keep up with technological change, a cacophony created by the rush to gain social capital, and loss of veracity (lets face it, Everyman was never really that interested in reading the footnotes.) Where does it leave us?
Joanne Jacobs says on March 5th, 2010 at 12:05 am :
I agree entirely with Vernor Vinge, training people to be useful searchers. But I also think there’s what I call the MBA effect beginning to infiltrate this space. MBA course are (quite deliberately) a mile wide and an inch deep. The objective is to give managers enough information on essential business issues to be able to read a financial statement, understand basic trade law and mobilise the value from marketing and sales practice. And perhaps most important of all, MBAs are supposed to be able to recognise people working for them who actually know what they are doing, and distinguish these from the charlatans. I think the same skills need to be applied in socially-mediated search. You need to be able to identify people who cite legitimate sources (and usually link back to the original work) and you need to be able to identify the weaknesses in research outputs.
I think what’s fantastic about emergent media is that we can challenge and test anything that is put out there. I know I’m a geek and naturally challenging, but there are lot of people who are passionate about their subject areas and become experts in their narrow fields of interest. I think the skill that’s emerging is being able to find those trusted sources and to use the social connections as a means of refining your research.
So reducing the noise isn’t just a matter of forging orthogonal linkages, but by developing the skills to distinguish trusted sources from the six degrees of Kevin Bacon. :)