The roadmap for filters, along with their potential future and their current challenges, is nicely illustrated through Scoble’s brief love affair with tech.memeorandum.
At it’s birth, tech.memeorandum was a personal filter for Scoble – it was built around the 1,300 some-odd RSS feeds in his reading list. Scoble loved the site. It was a personal filter, aggregating the information that he wanted and presenting it in an easily digestible form.
Over time the site grew, changed, and adapted – becoming an aggregator for the commons. Scoble has now sworn off the site and moved back to his RSS reader.
Can you blame him? He uniquely enjoyed an early taste of the treat that is on the horizon – personal filtration and aggregation of content. He then had to suffer as his personal filter eroded as it became an aggregator for the commons.
For the rest of us, we like the first iteration of filters and aggregators, but readily admit that they’re not perfect. They’re allowing us to efficiently receive filtered content in a format that is easy to digest. The filters have a long way to go before they become personal aggregators, and it’s at this point where they’ll add the most value.
The fact that aggregators aren’t perfect doesn’t mean we should decrease the amount of content being created. The reality is that we should create more content because of this imperfection. This will help drive their development and maturation.
Scott Karp has a nice post on this idea:
“In a world of infinite content, it’s the filter that creates a coherent media experience. The problem right now is not that there’s too much content, but that the filters are still too primitive.â€
As the filters grow from aggregators for the commons to personal aggregation the exploding amount of user generated content will no longer be seen as noise; rather, it will begin to deliver on its enormous potential.
In my opinion it already has, and will only continue to do so. Those who think there’s too much noise need to start building and implementing their own rudimentary personal filters. The tools currently exist (aggregators, discovery pages, individuals, …) and to not utilize them now is a mistake - there’s some incredible stuff to discover within the noise.
Scoble’s had a taste of the future and he wouldn’t stop raving about the benefits. Eventually we’ll all get to enjoy the fruit. I can’t wait.
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