Too Many Choices, Too Much Content
Sometimes it's just hard to keep up. In this technology-focused niche we all live in there are new applications, new initiatives, and new platforms that spring up every day, not to mention constantly breaking news that fills our RSS readers. Take a day off and you're behind. Take an hour off and you just missed 300 more blog posts. In addition to the everyday struggles of information overload the average computer user deals with - like the overflowing inbox, for example - those in the internet/new media/technology space aren't just overwhelmed with new content, but also with new applications and choices to manage that content. What's a web-app loving person to do?
Drowning in Awesomeness
The double-edged sword that comes with keeping abreast of all the latest developments in technology means that we're always aware of the latest and greatest applications and services to try...but it also means that we've tried all of them. Unlike the average user, who doesn't even bother creating a Facebook profile until several of their friends cajole them into doing so, technology early adopters are the first to sign up and create profiles on every service that launches.
Sometimes these services have value; if so, they trickle down to the rest of the world over time. For example, social networks like MySpace and Facebook changed the way people interacted online. Flickr made photo sharing fun, easy, and social. YouTube let everyone be a star. However, sometimes they're not so great after all, and they end up fading away into nothingness in that area we've affectionately dubbed the "deadpool."
These failures don't seem to dampen our enthusiasm for trying the "next big thing," though. Every day, the web is filled with posts about this new app or that great service. When you think about it, it's really rather impressive that there are that many of them out there - enough to be written about in a seemingly nonstop fashion.
For technology enthusiasts, it's not enough to just "try" the new apps and services though. If they're the next big thing (or so everyone says), we're supposed to jump on board and use them, use them, use them. Scoble even recently threatened to expose some of the so-called "A-Listers" for not being active enough, saying:
"I thought about embarrassing most of the A listers on FriendFeed, because very few of them actually read that many blogs (I can tell, they rarely comment on, or link to, or FriendFeed with other people’s blogs)"
Right....because if they're not on FriendFeed, they're phonies, huh?
So, no. Commentary is not enough. We're supposed to live, breathe, eat, sleep, and dream this stuff. The problem is, while we're busy experimenting with this new thing and that new thing, we might miss out on actually enjoying the services that are already there for us, working just fine, thank you very much.
Too Many Choices
However, there are certain areas we've noticed that seem to be the biggest sources of conflict as of late. In these areas, several companies are clamoring to be the winner of the space, releasing duplicate or similar products, constantly adding new features, and generally trying to one-up their competitors in an effort to come out on top. When there are several companies doing the same thing, it gets confusing for the average user and time-consuming for the early adopters who play with everything. In the end, the hope is that one great service would come out on top, but that's hardly ever the case. We're already on MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, and LinkedIn because there's no one winner for social networks...are we going to have to use all these newcomers battling it out, too?
The Battle to Be Open
We never thought we would see the day that the big companies were actually fighting to see who can be the most open of the bunch, but that seems to be exactly what's taking place now in the battle of the social graph APIs. You've got Google's Friend Connect service vs. Facebook's Connect service vs. MySpace's Data Availability, each announced within days of each other. Instead of making it easy for users to understand what it means to be maximizing a social graph, the companies have just flooded the feeds with their separate announcements. As Marshall reported on Monday, the reason, at least according to Google is that "the beauty of open standards is that companies don't have to talk. They can just meet up around interoperable technologies." We would like to think that this battle for openness will lead to easier-to-use social networks as our friend graphs will get to follow us around, but something about the timing of these separate announcements smells like a battle brewing.
The Battle of the Lifestreams
There's MyBlogLog's lifestream, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm and even Facebook's attempt at lifestreaming, which involves integrating a handful of services into users' Mini-Feeds and News Feeds. Too much? You betcha. Although FriendFeed is getting buzz, even it doesn't offer a way to really filter the info it displays. Sure, the "filter by service" Greasemonkey script can help narrow down content and the Friends & Groups script can help sort your friends into groups of your own choosing, but we shouldn't have to rely on a Firefox add-on to make our apps work for us. And while FriendFeed may be one service (besides Twitter, of course) that internet addicts can't live without, it still has a way to go to cross over to the mainstream user, especially if Facebook starts offering similar integration.
The Battle to Tweet on AIR
It seemed that every time our favorite Twitter AIR app Twhirl was updated, Alert Thingy followed suit and vice versa. Both struggled to integrate FriendFeed into their stream while still providing the best Twitter-on-the-desktop experience, and neither really accomplished that. Alert Thingy integrated FriendFeed updates into its stream in one window while Twhirl went with a second window just for FriendFeed. Neither was a perfect solution. Alert Thingy lacks the Twitter-specific features of Twhirl and Twhirl's two windows isn't ideal for users concerned with desktop real estate, like laptop users. What's worse is that in addition to Twhirl/Alert Thingy battle, we also had to contend with other also-rans which included both Twitter, FriendFeed, and combo apps like Snitter, Spaz, Feedalizr, bTT, and MySocial's browser sidebar and AIR app.
The Battle to Filter Your RSS
It's not just RSSmeme vs. ReadBurner - although that's an obvious pairing. Both of those sites feature top shared items from Google Reader. RSSmeme recently launched an API, which means it now offers filtering, albeit the geeky sort involving the creation of custom URLs. ReadBurner, not to be outdone, announced NetVibes support shortly thereafter. However, Google saw that other services were springing up around their RSS reader, so in an effort to keep people in "Googleland" they added friends to your reader to allow for a more personalized filtering experience. Those friends can also now share items with notes, so you don't even need to go elsewhere to comment on the items in the feeds.
Unfortunately, the downside to the friends feature means that in addition to those feeds that you now subscribe to, you're also reading suggestions from friends. Not that they're not great and everything, but is it really so hard for Google Reader to go ahead and mark it as read in your feed list if your friend's shared item is from a blog whose feed you already subscribe to? Apparently it is. Which means if it's really good news, we'll read it twice. Or even three times if someone else shares it later on. There might be a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to filtering Google Reader via AideRSS, but ranking by popularity is really only one way to find the best content. There's something to be said for the hidden gems that get overlooked, too.
But the battle of RSS filtering doesn't end with Google Reader either. Perhaps not as apparent, but both Twitter and FriendFeed are slowly becoming people's preferred method of getting news. Why read through hundreds of unread, unranked items just to stay on top of the news? If it's any good, you'll hear it on Twitter or see it shared on FriendFeed. Some users are even positioning themselves as "human information filters," on these services, something our newest ReadWriteWeb contributor, Corvida, discussed not to long ago on her personal site. These highly active users (yes Scoble and Louis come to mind) are good friends to have on the service since they'll constantly be posting and filtering the best stuff for you.
Then there are the other memetrackers that exist to highlight the top stories of the day, too: Techmeme is at the top of the list, of course, but there are also newcomers/up-and-commers like LinkRiver, Techsted, SocialMedian, and community builder BlogRize. I'm just scratching the surface here and that's already ten different ways to filter the news.
The Battle of the Mobile Social Networks
This one will really surprise those not following the mobile networking space closely. When researching mobile network up-and-comer Brightkite, I stumbled upon a slew of mobile networks already competing in the space.
There's MocoSpace, Friendstribe, Hobnobster, Dodgeball, Zyb, mig33, Mobiluck, MeetMoi, JuiceCaster, Loopnote, Rabble, Wadja, Treemo, groovr, flagr, Lime Juice, Loopt, and Next2Friends, to name just a few. There are, in fact, many, many more. Some focus on texting, some on sharing images, others on geo-tagging, and others on traditional social networking. They're all acting like the mobile web is the wild west and if they can just get there first they might have a shot at winning.
However, who wants to bet that the mobile networks everyone ends up using are the ones who aren't pretending that the mobile web is some different web altogether? Even more likely winners are the mobile versions of MySpace and Facebook, where all your friends already exist.
The Battle of the Social News Sites
Of course there's Digg. But Digg is opening up the space for competition once again now that they're focused on going mainstream and featuring less technology news. Mixx seems to be doing well as a small, friendly tech social news site, but they're not the only one looking to catch the Digg overflow. There's also Yahoo Buzz, Propeller, Reddit, Digg-for-girls Kirtsy (formerly Sk*rt), Sphinn, roll-your-own Digg tool Pligg, please-don't-link to us Hacker News, and "if-we-ran-Digg" clone Sift'd. While all these sites are great for getting a post noticed by a wider audience, they're also multiplying the numbers of places you can read the exact same story you read hours ago in Google Reader, saw tweeted on Twitter, shared in FriendFeed, promoted on Techmeme, etc.
What Can We Do?
It's hard to say. Early adopters are not going to stop playing with every new service, but it's clear that we're getting to a point where tools that centralize, aggregate, but most importantly filter our content are going to be the ones that win out. There are only so many hours in the day, and, as it stands right now, every single one of them could be filled just consuming and interacting with content, social media, and web services. There's also this little thing called "going outside" that we would like to take part in, too. Hopefully we'll see the killer web app to filter the noise someday soon to help us do so, but it's definitely not here yet.
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Holy cow, so many applications are mentioned in this post, let alone the ones that were not mentioned.
If you are or are not a web app loving person, which one are just supposed to pick? So many choices...
Great Post. I couldn't agree more with the overabundance of "awesomeness" available. It is to the point where just using the web is cutting into any chance of watching tv, reading books, etc. Aggregators are making it easier on one hand, but on the other hand the experience isn't the same as the full version on each respective destination.
Great post! I agree wholeheartedly that we need that one killer app to sort out all the content once and for all.
But when that app comes out, how many others will follow suit? And we'll just have more killer apps to play with.
Seems like a vicious cycle.
I look forward to the day when I feel that I am getting all the content, the way I want it - simplicity is key.
Soon enough we'll be seeing Online Coaches (akin to Life Coaches) who will be hired to organize our lives online - hmmm, did I just find a new career path? :)
Surely we're getting to the point where all these aggregations, recommendations, friend watches, and ultimately the filters for these mean that we will get to that state of information we were promised about ten years ago of having a truly personalised newspaper.
We'll get very very targetted information, not only the things we're interested in, but the people we like...
Great Post.
In this evolving digital world of continuous loud noise only the focused and single purpose services that give a real advantage to the end-user will stand up and survive.
Only the strong will survive.
That goes for Web content developers, and consumers. Of course, given all the social media and link aggregation engines you noted above, I can't help but feel partially responsible.
I love the innovation. ___IT IS HAPPENING___.
There is more coming, and it's wonderful. Will everybody win? No. But it will be a lot of fun participating and watching.
Great post! (being repetitive, but I'm sure you don't care :))
I have to agree with Lynn, that we need a killer app, and that once we get one, 10 other ones will appear that try to make one or other detail slightly better.. that's the plus and the problem when you can't monopolize anything.. :)
But actually, a killer app wouldn't solve the problems, we would just have all of them in one place. What we really need is a decent filtering system to discard at least a small fraction of what we don't care about.. then improve that to a certain personalized threshold for the risk of useful content being discarded..
Hmm.. sounds like something we could try in our Topify project (see the link under my name) :)
This is a great post Sarah, and I did a session on this very topic at Podcamp NYC a few weeks back.
People have to find the apps that help them organize their lives offline and online. That's why ReadBurner has partnered with Netvibes. But they're just one choice.
Information overload is a dangerous thing, so this was a perfect wakeup call to a lot of folks.
Pls allow me to plug http://secondbrain.com in this thread.
Second Brain is a content aggregation platform where people can organize all their web content and bookmarks into a powerful personal online library.
Our mission is to help our users manage their online content and to create the largest library of user generated content in the world.
We have a lifestream where you can see you and your friends updates, but more importantly, we organize all your content in your personal library where you can browse and search in everything, and remix content from different service into collections.
Ultimately, we want to provide good recommendation features on top of the library that filters out the most relevant content for you. An early beta is already public. Pls give it a try - we have many more features coming up in the next few weeks.
Great post! I opened like 15 tabs in Firefox while reading this article!
Sarah,
This is something I've noticed as well recently so take heart that you're not alone. I wrote about here:
http://snurl.com/28t26.
cheers, Mark
Ditto the GREAT POST Sarah. Nobody really forces anyone to try something new and certainly they can do pretty much 'whatever makes them happy' on the Internet. It is those of us 'in the biz' in some way, or those that just love the technology (and very early adoption) that feel compelled to try them all. For me, it's VERY exciting, and I feel strongly that the web needed more one-to-one contact (and personal feedback) which apps like Friendfeed are providing. Time will tell :) The cool part is. It'll never end!
thanks you.
the hot trend will be... disconnect
of course only the affluent or successful will have the luxury (of time or money or self confidence) to be able to disconnect
it used to be the mark of the aristocracy to NOT work (hence all those poofy clothes and shoes and makeup and wigs -- obvious signs that one didn't work)
the new info-digi-aristocracy will be those people who feel no pressure at all to be constantly connected, and who are hard or impossible to reach
plus ca change
I can't help but wonder if we will need ever-broader "aggregators" to keep track of our aggregations...individual feeds lead to feeds of our most read feeds which lead to feeds of the feeds of these most read feeds which feed into our lifestreams...and we'll need meta-streams to keep track of our various lifestreams...until *poof* our laptops explode and we're left sitting on a grassy hill, surrounded by our friends.
@insider - "the hot trend will be... disconnect" - right on, dude.
In the meantime, why not have a look at one of my friend's new projects that will help to create personal, customized filters for the content you consumer, share and archive. It's called Bookworm. Get an invite to the private beta here: http://blog.bookworm.nu/
WebCrack 2.0 will own you and your children if you don't put the pipe own. Simple as that.
We still have a chance though. Our neurons still form the fittest social networks ever. They're being taken over by the very technology they created, but there's hope.
Internet addiction will proliferate and so that just might be a huge industrial opportunity.
I'm going to eat lunch with my wife now and breathe the lively air, feel its texture, enjoy the sunlight and focus my attention on the world that is disappearing.
The dusk is coming friends. Is your personal philosophy going to open its wings or fold?
Concerning information overload: check out my blog on information overload I started recently!
Also, we will be launching a new Web 2.0 platform for alert services and reminders that will make it easier to deal with IO. Comments are always welcome!
Awesome post ;-)
Awesome post ;-)
Awesome comment!
Agree with this post. I recently unsubscribed from TechMeme because I was catching around 80% of their posts through my regular feeds... and then there's Twitter....
The bigger question is: what will the landscape look like 10 years from now?
Really, I don't want to be with some of these people when they go into a Baskin-Robbins or Starbucks. It seems to me they'd never order anything except EVERYTHING.
awesome read. I've been ON the net since '91 , I think people need to choose the apps that feel good and work for them. With so many tools out there ,its never been a better time to get your message out to so many people. Im glad I saw this post. Well done.
Jp
Sarah,
Great post. Thanks! I have to agree with you in that we need to figure out a way to filter content, which to me, implies one location where everything goes (in order to be filtered) and I think thats part of the problem. A simple example would by comments. Different blogs offer different means to comment, some via customized comment forms (like this one) and others use Disqus. If I wanted to track my own comments (and others as well), guess what, I am faced with so many options that centralizing it (and thus filtering it) is an impossible task.
Will we have a service that does both well? Yes, and no. Yes, in that there will be (hopefully) one, and no because there will be options there too.
I honestly don't mind sitting by and watching. Innovation is exciting, and I am glad I am a part of if (as audience and hopefully soon a contributor). And personally, I don't mind hitting the off button every now and then ;-)
Again, awesome post, and yes, thanks to you now I have 6 new tabs. Off to creating new profiles
a few thoughts...
...one needs to loook into clouding the issue to see the light
...friends help organize the signal from the noise but you have to know who your friends are
Everyone is a producer of this fire hose of rich media. It won't go away, you can't make the binary decision to just turn it off or walk away for a while. It's here to stay and only gets faster and more intense. Its unfortunate to see the inverse of the wisdom of the crowd and suffer the noise of the crowd, but it needn't last long.
from my POV...the path through this storm is to mash and co process the exobyte social mind of you with the terabyte power of a semantic service that takes makes you a productive processing part of the system...Josh has it so right on !
Loook for it sooon .o0
mistaking the forest for the trees....
if your attention is directed outwards, at all this stuff, of course you are going to topple over with overload
but, if your attention is directed inwards to your self and your life, you can have complete faith and trust that you will discover exactly what you need when you needed for what is next in your life/work/love.
sheesh, even just nature is overwhelming, a full-blown sensory overload every minute. we "deal" with this by reducing it down to awe or beauty or enjoyment, and it is no longer a problem
this "great post" is a bit short sighted, in that the solution is the same as it has always been in the world and in the mind which sees the world, just be quiet. quiet the mind, learn to relax, meditate, do yoga, whatever, because this so-called overload is really nothing at all.
enjoy, gregory
Great post, on the mark with the current state of the web. We're drowning in lifestreaming and tools that will help my manage my 34 online social network identity streams, its pretty insane and I think most people outside the betakat krispy klub just stay away and wait 6-8 months to see who won the war.
I myself being a proud member of the betakat krispy klub am forced by nature to join nearly every beta that comes across my radar, constantly on the hunt for newness and something better.
I think its a good problem to have really. Part of what this whole web 2.0 craze is about is to make first, then see if it gets adopted. Its not a smart biz model but it keeps you on the radar screen with people who are addicted to change and the new.
I think we need to try and go without our connected tools, do some sort of detwittering week to see if we're really better with these tools or are they just tapping our ADD and fueling it.. and if they are.. maybe we don't care. :)
Great post. I started feeling uneasy just reading thought it-- there's so much to see and do and only so much of it is actually worthwhile.
I literally wrote up, just yesterday, how FriendFeed exacerbates this jumble rather than making it more parsimonious. Take a look here:
http://www.andydesoto.com/social-media/friendfeed-not-worth-the-time-or-the-hype/
None of us need suffer from social mania!
@sarahintampa,
this is overwhelming! I use FF, Twitter, Twirl, GReader, and Techmeme, and that is about as much as I can handle. What would be helpful is for someone to bundle it into:
Basic
Intermediate
Advanced
And maybe segment it by some kind of user type. Not sure how this can be developed but I'd like to "buy" a "pack" of applications that help me get at the good stuff and manage my online relationships!
@Elliot: that's an interesting thought...I'm just ranting, but I would definitely like to start seeing some *real* solutions here.
all comments except mine are missing the point :)
we are already missing most of what is happening, just by being in a body, in a particular culture, we are totally comfortable with missing 99.99999999% of human reality
stop paying attention to your thoughts about all this stuff and simply pay attention to your self, and the problem just disappears
everything you need professionally or personally appears at the right time, relax, enjoy the flow
this stuff is owning you, not you owning it
This killer app we're all looking for, the one that sorts it all out for us, was really what everyone expected when the web kicked off.
In many ways, the ideas that were knocking around then, about how to organize web content, were much more developed than they are at the moment.
They thought of communities as groups who share an interest in some bit of information, something which is inherently less 'social' than what we have. By contrast, we tend to think of Web 2.0 as communities filtering information for us, which is perhaps more social, but is inherently less efficient when it comes to filtering.
Getting the balance right requires something unfamiliar to us; a much more dynamic approach to how we organize communities and their information. People are trying to do this (e.g. oddflower self-organizes content and communities using traffic flows), but for the moment most users & commentators are still more excited by having a voice than the quality of what's getting said!
How true it is.
Filtering and containing is not just becoming a trend on the web, it's an idea we're seeing everywhere. Too much food, too much waste, too much entertainment. Where do we draw the line?
It's reassuring to think we're returning to the much-needed pattern of editing our stimulus.
@gregory makes a great point
I really did love this post because I think Sarah captures the frenzied, don't-want-to-miss it, reactionary and sporadic behavior of many early adopters and trend followers, self included.
however, gregory reminds us that our brains already filter out massive amounts of data. I'm sure we visually process Terabytes of "information" every day, yet we don't feel overwhelmed when we walk down the street or attempt to focus on one face in a crowd of dozens.
i disagree with gregory that the solution is to "focus on your self and relax."
our brains and nervous system evolved to manage the massive information load provided to our bodies by our senses.
we have not experienced a similarly productive evolution in digesting the sorts of information sarah wrote about, but that is coming. our brains and tech tools still lag in this area, but with increasingly powerful and intelligent machines continuing to augment our own intelligence, we'll get through this period.
yes i'm kind of singularitarian. at least a little bit.
True 100%
There are only few 'useful' web apps (something that would make me go back to it repeatedly, and perhaps pay a few dollars without much AdSense).
Then you have a sea of 'awesome' web apps. It would be interesting to know how often the app creators use their own service? (I mean when they are not developing it:-p)
My hypothesis - these awesome web apps helps create a buzzing environment around the web, which in "someway" helps the biggies of web.
Good read. One thing I'd like to point out is that multiple sites running on similar platforms doesn't (necessarily) mean they are all the same. That's like saying all television stations are alike.
Quality content and strong communities will win out -- even without filtering. Pick the few sources you can handle/trust and that are relevant to you (@gregory) and live.
As for a generalist approach to feed aggregation, I think Guy Kawasaki is on to something with alltop.com. It's a nice place to start if you aren't yet overloaded and are searching for voices on a wide range of topics.
Cheers,
James
Awesome post. Now I know I wasn't just imagining things.
Great post. I'm really glad that even among the digital crowd, I'm not alone in thinking that it's all getting to be just too much. Even though I love this stuff, I'm getting worn out.
I completely agree. It's becoming almost impossible to keep up with all the new developments. And then there's the added difficulty that those who do keep up are often the ones using these apps in an exploitative way for their own personal gain.
In Boswell's "Life of Dr. Johnson" the author recounts how his subject, a scholar and teacher, was once asked how he would respond to the notion put forth by such continental philosophers as Descartes, that life was an illusion or a dream. Kicking a rock he said simply, "I refute it thusly."
Social-networking mania is officially out of hand when FriendFeed inspires a billion-dollar valuation in the first few weeks of its existence. And why you ask? Because FF represents social media being fed by social media.
Time to put down the remote and go outside for a while. Or maybe just need to swallow the Red Pill, Matrix style, and remember what's real.
Posted by: mhedayat.myopenid.com
|
June 1, 2008 12:41 PM
hi all im mulan good luck just for you