How do you handle online data? These days key strokes are logged. Activity on the web packaged and sent off to “friends” as notifications. Last week I attended a business intelligence seminar where the speaker railed against, the commoditization of data. He said, since all manufactured products now have bar codes, in turn sending out bits at every stop, sometimes streaming data non-stop. Then we were approaching a tipping point where each additional bit received will add less and less useful intelligence to the data set. He then drew the grave conclusion that business analysis, as we know it is dying. I am more optimistic than Mr. Speaker but his speech made me think about the other consumers of information out there. You and I.
We all receive updates from social networks, the big ones and niches. Email, IM, status updates, blogs and micro-blogs, SMS, and now applications like google wave are all vying for our attention. As the amount of data thrown at us by these applications keep growing, so also our capacity to wrap our minds around them get increasingly tested. Some have given up on trying to make sense of all these. Like Fred Wilson If the Message is important, it will find me . Unlike Mr Wilson, I still try to make sense of all the bits thrown my way. My method has grown organically over time.
I keep 18 buttons, in the order of importance, on the bookmark bar on my browser (google chrome). Email first, all the way to the online stock trading competition. I have also perfected the art of diagonal reading. Using sites like Newser, where I read two paragraph summaries of the days news. My RSS reader has become less important, thanks to twitter. I tend to keep google reader set on ‘headline only” view. Clicking only on articles that grab my attention. This also means that I read fewer blog post from a more diverse set of blogs but I have become less loyal to particular blogs (sorry bloggers). I shy away from aggregators like Popurls, Friendfeed.
Overall, more bits are thrown at me, but I am getting more savvy at stripping away the noise, leaving only the core which I tend to spend more time drilling into. Unlike many data loathers out there , I see the increased data as a good thing and I believe the tools for filtering data will soon catch up.
How do you handle your noise?
Tags: data, noise, Social network service
Very useful post. My facebook interaction is already at a minimum and I agree with “If the Message is important, it will find me” approach. The concept of diagonal reading is also very interesting and I will definitely try it.
Unfortunately for me, the fact that I am a Nigerian politics junky means that I cannot wait for the ‘message’ to find me. Far too often messages involving African issues do not find their way to anyone, save for the money-making subjects such as poverty, war, corruption etc.
As such, I am forced to look for information. Facebook has been useful because my readers flood my inbox with relevant news, God bless them. These same readers send me email messages as well. Twitter works as well because I get to ‘eavesdrop’ on interesting communications and the exchange of relevant news and ideas.
My Google Reader still gets some usage but I have learned to start looking at the non-traditional news sources to get the tid bits I need that grow into morsels of stories for my writing.
Anyway, nice post, this made me realize that it is time to revamp the way I receive the ‘message’ and make the process as streamlined as possible.
Hope all is well with you and yours.
Interesting read.
I notice my habits changing too. I am not as observant as you are though. I will pay more attention from now on.