So I have dove into the whole social network stuff pretty heavily, like most anyone related to technology. I now find myself following many people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The information for the most part is interesting at best but to be honest about it, most of the information simple stinks. The “rivers” of information are just that, uncontrollable rivers that have no structure or guidance. Someone you follow posts great stuff then all of the sudden has a flurry of useless posts and information, only making the river harder to navigate. When you wake up in the morning and there are over 200 tweets or 300 plus new facebook events that is pretty hard to consume and navigate.
So yes, there are filters, search tags, and a couple of other ways to limit the feed but the reality is the information is inconsistent and not reliable. Twitter is even more of a nightmare to follow for long conversations between people. I spend most of my time in Facebook deleting messages and stop following posts by people or applications than actually reading anything fun, funny or business related.
Then you throw in LinkedIn. I am actually beginning to favor LinkedIn over all of the rest because of one simple element – the professional groups. I can easily navigate to a group and see “what’s going on” in that particular space. Almost like a news section of a newspaper. I also enjoy seeing the job changes, profile updates, etc of the people I follow because usually that information is interesting.
Lastly, there is PlanetLotus and PlanetEclipse. I think there is something here with controlled aggregations. I can go to a centralized place to read things related to a given product or technology or at least be guaranteed the content is somewhat related to the community.
So yes, this is a rant as I sit here tonight and find these social networks more frustrating than useful. Maybe I will feel different tomorrow when I wake up and see 800 things I have to ignore.
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