Posts Tagged ‘robert scoble’

I wanted to start off this blog post talking about “noise” on friendfeed. What is noise you ask? The noise level is all relevant to the amount of people you subscribe to. A good example is Robert Scoble. While at first I did not subscribe to him (nothing personal), I do now. Scoble probably has the biggest follower base on Friendfeed. Fear of noise is why i did not subscribe. After following him for 2 weeks on Friendfeed, my opinion is just the opposite. His stream is full of valuable nuggets of information. Most of his followers are smart and intelligent and have value to add to Friendfeed. If this is considered noise, then I embrace it. Hutch Carpenter broke it down even further classifying 2 types of social media consumers, Signalist or Discoverer’s. I would have to classify myself as a little of both, leaning towards the side of discoverer. That’s why I can tolerate noise better. Twitter is the true definition of noise. On Twitter you have the ability to block people or choose not to follow them at all. On Friendfeed you have the option to hide peoples content you deem noisy. You can also unsubscribe from them as well. So the options are there if you choose to use them, but when you constantly complain about noise and do nothing about, you yourself become noise. Now I’m gauging this opinion on the amount of people I follow on Friendfeed, which is close to 100 subscriptions. This is relatively small compared to the heavyweights on Friendfeed who follow several hundred people. I have linked below to some notable posts regarding noise, also embedded a Friendfeed tutorial video on how to use the hide feature.

Notable reads:

A Definition of Noise
Five Ways To Use the Hide Function
The noise reduction system

Hide Tutorial from Ross Miller on Vimeo.