Social media overload
At LIFT we talked about Internet addiction, that turned into an article on the BBC. I spoke up and said that my addiction got me lots of benefits. More friends. Invites overseas. And lots of interesting experiences including dinner with Douglas Engelbart (still one of the highlights of my tech tour).
Well, I’m not overloaded enough, so today I’m adding all 719 of my Twitter followers as friends which means my home page is fast and furious. Why do that? So I can listen in on 719 of the world’s early adopters. That might be interesting. I might learn something. Or, I might just get overloaded. We’ll see. It certainly isn’t easy to do. Twitter wants to make it hard to add friends. Probably so their servers don’t get overloaded.
That leads Chris Saad to ask when we’re going to get overloaded? Oh, Chris, we’re well past that point. It’s just that by listening to a larger network I see trends earlier.
Oh, Francine Hardaway links to a video of the presentation I did on Thursday in Phoenix — she also linked to almost everything I talked about, which makes it seem like an info-dense presentation. I started it by showing how I read feeds in Google Reader.
Speaking of last week, I finally met Phil Windley (formerly Utah’s CIO) and someone shot an awesome photo of both of us in front of the Utah snow. Damn, I wanted to go skiing so bad. It was a real honor to meet Phil. He’s as smart and nice as he comes across in his blog.
Shahar Boyayan wrote about the Utah “Slopecast” presentation I gave and said she liked meeting me. I liked meeting her. Back at you Shahar and keep it up, sounds like you’re doing an awesome job helping businesses learn their way around this new world.
Along these lines Louis Gray has 10 ways to improve Google Reader. Oh, I should make a list too!
My first suggestion? Make a “read” item disappear instantly out of my “all items” view. I really hate seeing items I already read there.
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March 4th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
robert, i have to say- adding your 700+ followers on twitter as friends may be the coolest experiment in radical listening i have seen in a very long time.
March 4th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
[...] Twitter is all over the place– Chris Brogan had it on his slides– Chris Penn did too. Scoble just added his 700+ fans to his friends list, as a radical listening experiment. This may be the coolest thing I’ve [...]
March 4th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Robert,
Here’s my Yahoo Pipes config to make “custom twitter groups” in case there’s something you want to pay more attention to.
http://www.christopherspenn.com/2007/03/05/how-to-make-custom-twitter-groups/
March 4th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
Okay, I read you on Twitter before seeing this context.
Here’s my theory and I’m still working on it. I think those of us who consume a lot of information - it has helped our brains evolved, our synthesis muscles to get — well tight — so don’t necessarily get overloaded. Yep, occassionally - we bounce, or are unfcoused. And the naysayers talk about this as a bad thing.
But I think we’ve master rapid attention shifting and there something in our physical brains that has shifted.
Nothing basedon science .. just hunch.
March 4th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
[...] 4th, 2007 · No Comments Scoble continues to lead the charge, by adding all the twitter users to his list. Twitter is one of [...]
March 4th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Not to make light of the situation, but here’s a link to a story on extreme online addiction (or online overdoing it). Hope this doesn’t break the page:
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyid=2007-02-28T085229Z_01_PEK267720_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHINA-INTERNET-ADDICTION.xml&src=rss&rpc=22
March 4th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
This reflects the growing inadequacy of feed readers to match each others presentation features, in the absence of platform software. Probably the Vista RSS Platform will offer some respite at the lower level.
I did a small study from the top of my head, today.
http://thothzone.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B788E69E0FD64E2!499.entry
Please give your comments if any.
March 4th, 2007 at 11:48 pm
Google Reader Suggestions Proving Popular
Robert Scoble noted the piece in a summary on the potential overload of social media. He adds, “I should make a list too!” Let’s hope he does.
March 5th, 2007 at 4:02 am
We’re processing faster; you’ll either filter faster, scrap it as a bad idea, or get bored.
It’s not “extreme online addiction”, we’re all just getting more connected. Twittering to the States from my phone here in Australia, the Google Talk twitter feed which means I’m updating at work, the integration of the Google personalised pages, and yahoo pipes. Everything’s moving towards convergence - like the iPhone ;)
March 5th, 2007 at 11:36 am
re: twitter. I see you stopped at the letter i. Come on Robert you can do it .. only another 18 letters to go :)
March 5th, 2007 at 11:38 am
oh and as for online addiction .. pah ! I think being connected is fantastis, especially right now as I blog from Perth (AUS). Keeping in touch via twitter, textamerica and eyejot and of course my own blog is great. 10, hell even 5 years ago times like now would have been even more cut off from the family when travelling.
Online connected addiction rocks !
Nige
March 8th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
[...] is another recent signup on Twitter. Robert Scoble took Twitter by storm last week when he added over 700 followers. He’s 42. He also urged people to befriend 34-year-old Chris Pirillo yesterday (P.S. I did). [...]
March 10th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
[...] Scoble thinks we’re way past the point of information overload. Earl Mardle says not so - we get pounded by external stimuli orders of magnitude greater in the outside, disconnected world. [...]
March 17th, 2007 at 3:55 am
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Not to make light of the situation, but here’s a link to a story on extreme online addiction (or online overdoing it).
October 26th, 2007 at 6:22 am
Okay, I read you on Twitter before seeing this context.
Here’s my theory and I’m still working on it. I think those of us who consume a lot of information - it has helped our brains evolved, our synthesis muscles to get — well tight — so don’t necessarily get overloaded. Yep, occassionally - we bounce, or are unfcoused. And the naysayers talk about this as a bad thing.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
[...] and Twitter are possibly the noisiest communities of all, as they allow for instant broadcast-blasts of “suggested” content to [...]