August 24th, 2008
Gauravonomics TV Episode 5: There Can Never Be Too Much Content
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My young friend Harshil Karia — who has recently started social media agency Foxymoron — recently asked me if there is too much content out there, if we have become so focused on creating (often duplicate) content that we have forgotten how to listen.
Well, I’m someone who believe that there can never be too much content. It’s a god things that so many of us are creating so much content, and here are three reasons why –
- The Wisdom of Crowds: The more people link to, vote on, tag, or share a piece of content, the more visible it becomes. When we engage with content online, we endorse it, make it easier for others to discover it. So, in fact, every click does count.
- The Value of Mashups: There is as much value in creating connections between existing pieces of content, mashing them up, as in creating totally original content. When we create mashups, we reveal underlying layers of understanding that were not visible before.
- The Personalization of News Feeds: Since we can’t read or watch all the content available in the world, we learn to filter out most of it and pay our attention to only what is truly relevant to us. As a result, instead of superficial “awareness” about everything that’s going on, we learn to build deep “knowledge” in areas that are of interest to us.
What do you think? Is there too much content out there? Can there ever be too much content? Is too much content a bad thing? Do let me know.
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Gaurav, agreed, i think from a wisdom of a crowds perspective and the mashups philosophy is great. I notice how you mention “knowledge” - apart from a few bloggers, i doubt many have the knowledge quotient. My question was directed more from a qualitative purpose - in terms of the qualitative aspect, a lot is lacking. http://theconstantobserver.blogspot.com/2008/07/theres-already-more-than-we-can-read-so.html - that was the main objective of this post. The amount of noise generated is frightening. But social media is a free market knowledge economy.
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I just happened to read your blog and my concern is - There definately is a lot of content to be put up. But is the right content being viewed by the people who need it more than by those who do not. In regards to what Harshil said, regarding too much content being exposed;
I share the same concern only because I never really get to see the articles that might matter the most to me than others.
I often land up reading things that have little or no value to me. A lot of this is attributed to the SE results. Also, a lot more is attributed to:
1.The mashups of the ‘good’ content, not sure whether they then are valuable(anymore) or not.
2.Even, with RSS around, not knowing which articles/content to read/view because over 50% are either duplicated OR serve no qualitative purpose.
I may sound a bit harsh but frankly, I am fed up of reading non-sense in the time I dedicate to reading online. Its seldom that I come across a few brilliatn articles that keep me motivated. Maybe I am at fault poor using poor search techniques but I still believe it is the responsibility of the publisher to ensure taht I am exposed to his work than vica-versa.
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@Harshil/ Varun: I know that searchability of social media content is a huge issue. My approach is to rely on filters to screen content for me. These filters can be people like Robert Scoble/ Jeremiah Owyang/ Susan Bratton, or they can be websites like Techmeme/ Digg/ Technorati, the last two of which are great wisdom of crowd filters.
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