When I go to user-contributed content sites to see what’s happening in the city I am in (e.g. upcoming.org), or social bookmarking sites for interesting web pages, or even on Facebook I see a lot of noise mixed with the few tidbits I might be interested in. The noise is mostly provided by teens, twenty-somethings, and meme-of-the-day echoers. But what is noise to me is golden to others. Therein lies the failing of the current state of social media sites.
What can I do? This was the question I pondered while sitting in my daughter’s high school orchestra concert (they were wonderful by the way). The answer probably lies in how I share and collect information offline from friends, family, co-workers, industry associates and people I encounter randomly. But then, isn’t that the problem with social media sites? The information I’m seeing isn’t being provided by my friends, family, co-workers, etc. It is from complete strangers of various reputations.
Advocates of social media sites point to the tremendous resource we can be to create and promote user-created information to each other, information that isn’t being put out to sell or unduly influence. This model has been very popular for many and for a while I was one of those. But I’m now becoming overwhelmed and challenged to filter out the noise.
Most (all?) of my friends and family do not spend time contributing or promoting content on social media sites. That means I’m left with information put up by a few co-workers and industry associates. The value of this information is all over the place since this group consists of the teens, twenty-somethings, and meme-of-the-day echoers (the cost of being in the marketing/PR space) mentioned earlier.
I wish for a day when I can collect information that is like that found in office lunch room conversations. The quality level there is so much higher since we choose to share what we know will be interesting and relevant to our audience, topics we have experience with, and responsibility for its accuracy since we’re not being anonymous to each other.
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[...] Joe Beaulaurier’s blog wrote an interesting post today on Thereâ��s too much noise in the social mediaHere’s a quick excerpt When I go to user-contributed content sites to see what’s happening in the city I am in (e.g. upcoming.org), or social bookmarking sites for interesting web pages, or even on Facebook I see a lot of noise mixed with the few tidbits I might be interested in. The noise is mostly provided by teens, twenty-somethings, and meme-of-the-day echoers. But what is noise to me is golden to others. Therein lies the failing of the current state of social media sites. What can I do? This was the question I [...]
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