Signal vs Noise
May 18, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
This has become one of the catch phrases of the “web 2.0″ world. How much of the information that is being pushed at you
is Signal (something you want to read/hear/know about) and how much of it is Noise (something you care absolutely nothing about, and yet, it occupies brain space because it’s being pushed at you)?
After writing, and pondering about how Facebook has lost a lot of it’s lustre [post] for me at least, I started looking at the other things in my world pushing noise at me. Google reader for sure. I killed off several of the feeds that I somehow thought I cared about. FriendFeed is another one… I removed a lot of the chatter there as well because I was missing the stuff from actual friends that I wanted to see.
Finally, I’m taking a good hard look at Twitter, and removing anyone from my stream that doesn’t talk to me, or hasn’t in ages, that I don’t talk to, or haven’t in ages, and names that I just don’t know who they are.
I guess, in a way, this is a bit of “social networking fatigue” [wordspy] going on here. Either way, I just know that I’m missing the updates from the people I want to talk to or hear from and seeing random sports scores, people not joining the conversation but instead taking the “What are you doing?” question just too damn literally and conversations between people in which I don’t know EITHER participant.
How much of what you’re seeing on your own sites these days is just noise and how much of it is something you’re actually interested in?
(image source: newscom)
Colleen:
I totally agree with you on the subject of “….fatigue.” It would appear that there are countless new online communities that are born each day. And I, as a student of this phenom, am trying to wrap my arms around all of it! I want to know the leading figures/profiles of that world, and I will have conversations with them (and this is why I’m doing the research). I want to ask them what they are really finding, and how they are really handling it all.
It is, after all, overwhelming – and it really hasn’t reached any sort of a tipping point.
I teach people how to look at their relationships – both on and off-line – in the context of “networking” (I dislike the word and what it connotes). I feel that if I can show people that 1. this world of theirs can be managed,
2. that they can do it using discernment, and
3. that the ultimate choice is always their’s – I will have really helped them. And that’s what I want to do.
My professional background is as a mainstream headhunter – both with my own business and also occupying the corporate staffing realm. Networking well served me during this career. I just survived a bad case of cancer. Had I not had my network in place, I have no idea how I could have survived.
Top quality networking was demonstrated to me by my mother’s expert business building ( I witnessed her results!), and – like most folks – I learned nothing about it in school. This facility comes down through a maternal line that started with my greatgrandmother – the first woman newspaper staffer in Boston and the founder of the New England PressWomen’s Association. I found out recently that she (Sallie Joy White) was invited to speak at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1890 or thereabouts.
She spoke – as it turns out – on the topic of networking! Imagine that!
So here I am today working in the dual worlds that we are so fortunate to occupy. I know that it’s alot of “stuff”, but I can assure you that our forebears (and mothers, especially mine!) would be thrilled to have the technolgies we have today.
I’m sure we’ll all sort of muddle through the ever-expanding maze.
Erika Hanson Brown
The Connectoring® Facilitator & Founder
STELLAR, a Fitness Membership Organization
Denver, CO USA
http://www.connectoring.com
I had a very very small follow list for twitter, just a few dozen. Then I realized I was just listening to the same conversations over and over again.
A repetitive signal, if you will.
We need the noise, to be exposed to something new, to find new conversations and to be exposed to new ideas.
If we stay with what we know, that is all we will know and the echo chamber will bring nothing but screeching feedback.
As a radio guy, we’re taught early on to read things outside of our interests, we have to reflect ALL interests of the community.
I’m not saying we all have to read EVERYTHING that is tweeted or fed, but limiting yourself to who you know, and what you like, is .. well .. limiting yourself.
Hey Buzz – I actually do agree with you, but I’m following more than 650 people. I don’t have to know all of them to follow them, and there’s no way I could, but frankly, if we’re following each other only because it’s polite, but they never talk to me because something i said intrigued them, and i never talk to them because nothing they have said intrigues me, then it’s noise I don’t need. and that was my overall point. :)
I love the term “social networking fatigue”.
In my (pre-Internet) genereration, we used to send the annual holiday card and add someone to your joke e-mail list.
Now, with all the social networking, it can become overly time consuming to follow people that you really aren’t that interested in keeping up with.
If you were, you would take the time to call or get together more often.