Why Google News has no noise

I prefer selective noise over plain old news. In other words I decide which topics are of interest to me and follow only those, noise and news. That is more efficient than just noise, which can sometimes drive you crazy (at least it does that to me).

recently i’ve been ‘track’ing one word on twitter. design. so anytime anyone anywhere twitters anything about the design of anything i get an instant message. (getting it going is kind of quirky – but once you do it feels way more newsy than news) Perhaps as its easy to filter out the noise. there is a personal element too – not someone paid to produce fluff – but someone interested in something enough to pull out their phone and type in 140 characters while in the midst of their friends or families or board meetings… I guess the word for design is design – at least in several languages so far…

here’s a sampling:

(wheelscore): The German Car Blog: Audi A3 Clubsport quattro: Cool design study made for W… – http://wheelscore.com/out.php?id=278161

(designcarter): Design[grin]ivide – Markup + FTP + Terminal + More = Coda = Awesomeness!: I’ve alwa.. http://tinyurl.com/658mjc

(ernohannink): Nieuw op HappyHouris Design kan ook gelukkig maken: Een leuke presentatie over ho.. http://twurl.nl/xz8mhz

(TChed): Starbucks Under fire for new logo design: http://tinyurl.com/5a3z4x

(candiluu): @jaimef Miami Vice is an excelent example of poor sound design.

(devfunnel): [design: A List Apart] Zebra Striping: Does it Really Help? http://www.alistapart.com/articles/zebrastripingdoesithelp

(askrom): I [heart] design history, but when a designer claims that today’s challenges are no different than decades ago, they just seem old and bitter.

(devfunnel): [design: COLOURlovers] When I’m Horny http://tinyurl.com/6xlhaz

(twHIVE_W20): [-O] Finishing up a CMS with an oversized design for old people in redlands …catering to old peo.. http://tinyurl.com/55wq7t

(sarahatwood): @douglassarine well, i wouldn’t recommend you get ladies underwear but if you insist the design goes in the back

(tjreo): Trying to prefer twitterific over twhirl but just can’t. Features important to me win out over beautiful design.

(melmcbride): why must they design so many women’s products with Barbie doll aesthetics? http://tinyurl.com/64r66n

(makkura): How Design ’08 opening keynote!! The fun starts now!!
Sent at 4:03 PM on Sunday

(hans_engel): New site design is live! Sorry for the stinky ‘About Me’ section – I was never good at writing those. http://is.gd/ihK

(laurict): Interior design suggestion: when building a public men’s room, don’t install highly reflective tile behind the toilet. Mildly disturbing.

(kingkool68): New blog post: Steve Jobs Cannot Design A Mouse http://tinyurl.com/5wbhkj

(kbondelli): I don’t even want to think about the hours lost in web design because Microsoft made an inferior product in IE and people choose to use it

(JamiePappas): Great post by @chrisbrogan re: blog design – check it out! http://tinyurl.com/6q5zhw

(designforum): Graphic Design Forum Dosugus cushion: Dosugus cushion looks like a black screen a.. http://tinyurl.com/5m2s2d

(wordpressjob): New job posted! WordPress blog design http://tinyurl.com/6bvnr6

(AndyLenz): schönes neues design bei meinem neuen #twitter lieblingsdienst #twitturly http://twitturly.com/

(TheJoshuaTree): I dont know why, but every-time I listen to Design Matters With Debbie Millman, I feel like a carp designer :/

(Beaverdale): Drinking ACME pale ale just because I like the retro-y design of the label (but it is pretty darn good beer). Every day should be like this.

Michael: interesting to compare your comment to that of Randy Holloway at http://randyh.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/the-news-is-in-the-noise/

> Scoble, you are utterly worthless.

Yo, Michael C… I find that I disagree with Scoble more often than I agree with him, but dude, what’s with the *personal* hate? Given that you clearly have no interest in, nay, actually can’t stand his commentary, why read it? The Internet’s a grand, big, and flexible place. Find some corners you like and perhaps save on blood pressure medication

Thank you, Robert.

“Noise” before the China quake? Does that mean you are really a Princeton Egg in disguise?

Who cares if you knew about the China earthquake before the US new media? There were people in China who knew before you. Who cares.

BTW scoble, I discovered google.com 45 minutes before you did. Who cares. So you were interviewed on bozo US news media. Millions of people in Asia knew about the earthquake before you. Why don’t you search for extraterrestrial life or something useful?

Noise is wonderfully useful to get the latest news. I’m attempting a method to filter out the noise to get the news from across the web without actually using/relying on a specific service like Twitter.

Andy Beard’s comment is right. Robert’s reply to Andy is wrong. Robert, techmeme.com/lb is an output, not an input. And there are many, many blogs whose links send juice/love/rank equal to TechCrunch’s.

Interesting take on noise vs news. I’ve always been an information junkie, a mix of noise and news I guess. I enjoy skimming through numerous blog posts and info bits from Twitter each day. I also enjoy magazine articles – things that aren’t time sensitive – that go behind the scenes or look over the horizon for trends. And when I can, I do a quick scan of thousands of press release headlines each week (PR Newswire & Business Wire) – kind of like a PR Twitter stream. All of it together helps me get a feel for trends and shifts in the digital/business landscape. Finding out how Zappos, for example, is using Twitter so effectively tells me we’ll see more Brands jumping on the Twitter train soon.

Don’t lose site of the difference between why you trawl the noise and why some of us subscribe to your output. There is very little value for me in getting the mere fact of the existence of an earthquake a few minutes before someone else. I’m certainly not subscribed to your feeds for geological information.

It’s kinda interesting to confirm that the Internet has become real-time – but it’s been real-time for years now – twitter just makes it easier to notice.

The greatest service any noise trawler can provide me is to filter the noise. Your filter is your value proposition. Be very careful how you play with the filter’s settings.

You’ve hung out with the world’s top journalists? Really? Which ones?

Walt Bogdanich, or Jake Hooker? Amy Harmon? Jo Becker ? Barton Gellman? Steve Fainaru? Gene Weingarten? Steven Pearlstein? Brett Blackledge? Kenneth Weiss? Usha Lee McFarling?
Susan Schmidt? James Grimaldi?, R. Jeffrey Smith? Dana Priest? James Risen? Eric Lichtblau? Joseph Kahn? jim Yardley? Dele Olojede?

If you are going to make such a bold claim, at least name some names.

And Ted Kennedy’s family and friends new about his seizure before you did. What’s your point?

this is just basic communication theory.

information -> transmitter -> communication channel -> receiver

The channel acts as a filter.

You are pointing out that Google News acts as a filter prior to the transmission as their methodology slects only “reputable” or “highly regarded” information sources.

I’m guessing that most readers of your blog, greater social/online network, possess sufficient receiver processing power to parse the noise, so therefore they desire a high bandwidth transmitter and communication channel.

However, I don’t believe that everyone wishes to do the receiver post-processing and often prefer news which is easier to digest.

thanks for the post

If I were a real news junkie then I’d go for the noise. I’d be willing to expend the energy required to spot trends and basically keep up with the noise. As it is, I’m not willing, which is why news is usually enough for me. I only want to keep up enough to consume the strained, filtered and processed product.

If I may use a crude analogy: It’s like having someone else masticate my food before I eat it. I lose out on the nutrients and most of the enjoyment. (Not to mention it’s disgusting.) But it saves me the trouble of having to chew. If I had the time or energy or willingness, then of course I’d rather do it myself.

as a professional, seasoned print journalist, i’d like to tell your readers you are full of crap. a tour of a newspaper’s satellite printing plant does not mean you have “hung out” with top journalists. sorry to use this language, but you are somewhat pathetic. as a simple example, a real journalist knows the difference between “who” and “that,” or at least his or her editor does. you really don’t have a bit of a handle on the news business. your prime sources of daily news are on the bottom rung of information. just what are you trying to achieve? from what i see, you, as with most of americans, haven’t the foggiest idea about what news is or what the news business is about. you might want to give it up. while you’re at it, review some of your 7th grade grammar lessons.
and sorry, steve, you didn’t list a single “real journalist.” most of the best are not readily known to the general public because we don’t seek tabloid-cable tv attention.

Since noise is where the future trends and actions hide, wouldn’t it be interesting to implement that behaviour in regular business. Thinking of NPM Noise Process Management as a challenge for companies.

http://bpmedge.wordpress.com

its quite cool without noise :d

Fantastic analysis and explanation of the two, Robert.

Really insightful. Great job.