Comments on: The Signal to Noise Ratio Feels Out of Whack To Me

By: Rob Hyndman

Rob Hyndman — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 23:16:30 +0000

Increasingly, we’re absorbing data but not taking in information. Filtering out the most relevant – interesting – provocative of the 100 posts on the same story is a massive challenge. What we need is a relevance engine (with apologies to Alec Saunders) to address the many different contexts and criteria involved in filtering everything that comes in. So far, the only thing that comes close is the brain, so I work furiously, every time that list creeps up to 300+, to get it down under 100.

Cheers,
Rob

By: mark evans

mark evans — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 20:01:05 +0000

brad,
i agree with your position, although it’s difficult to not get on the bandwagon when a well-known player such as del.icio.us gets acquired. that said, most of my better-read posts have been my own ideas rather than bandwagon jumping. i did one on the size of the latest wired magazine that much to my surprise got all kinds of attention. i guess it shows people like original ideas.

cheers, mark

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:58:39 +0000

I agree that there is a bit of an insular (or incestuous) quality to memeorandum’s links sometimes, and what I value is finding the alternative voice. But at the same time, I would argue that memeorandum does a pretty good job of finding and linking to those too — I found your post through memeorandum as well. Just because everyone is writing about Yahoo and del.icio.us or about Skype and eBay doesn’t mean that they are all saying the same thing about those topics, and often the discussion about important deals like those ones helps to stimulate ideas about other things. So I don’t necessarily see it as a bad thing.

By: Gordon Weakliem

Gordon Weakliem — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:49:30 +0000

I think that part of the reason is that even after reading the Fortune article, I still have no clue what Provide commerce does, and by the admission of several analysts in the article, nobody’s really sure what Liberty does. Am I supposed to get excited about this?

By: john

john — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:38:59 +0000

It’s good!
And because of these reasons companies quickly pass under the radar of bigger companies and become bigger in their own way. For e.g. walmart! Just nice to see that in this world where news travels very fast, it is still possible for good companies quitely grow and not get acquired as every other good company does.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:25:42 +0000

I specifically don’t blog this kind of thing because I’ve realized after 3 years that I have little to add.

The irony of the whole situation is that I found your post through Memeorandum

By: Ken Yarmosh

Ken Yarmosh — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:56:37 +0000

Brad…I agree there was an enormous amount of “Yahoo! bought del.icio.us” and nothing more. I caught a couple of good analytical pieces and highlighted them on the hub (as well as added my own 2.0 cents).

These unfoldings speak to some larger issues in the blogosphere and from my perspective, vastly reduces its value. Not everyone can be the newsbreakers or newsmakers that Steve Rubel and Mike Arrington are. Since those “models” work though, people often attempt to mimic them.

The push putton publishing model of blogging facilitates the “first to print” mindset. I think we will see an evolution going forward, where bloggers who bring unique perspectives, not entirely consumed with ‘the now’ will gain more traction. That’s not to say that the newsbreakers and newsmakers will lose their seats – I just think those seats are all filled up.

By: Simon Brocklehurst's Weblog

Simon Brocklehurst's Weblog — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:44:48 +0000

The Ben and Mena Show…

So… the “big story” to come out of the recent Les Blogs 2.0 conference was “The Ben and Mena Show”. If you’ve an eye for trivia, you will know all about it by now: Mena Trott – CEO of Six Apart – was giving a talk…

By: Simon Brocklehurst's Weblog

Simon Brocklehurst's Weblog — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:44:48 +0000

The Ben and Mena Show…

By: Gaurav Agarwal

Gaurav Agarwal — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 08:45:00 +0000

And because of these reasons companies quickly pass under the radar of bigger companies and become bigger in their own way. For e.g. walmart! Just nice to see that in this world where news travels very fast, it is still possible for good companies quitely grow and not get acquired as every other good company does.

By: Brian Magierski

Brian Magierski — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:54:48 +0000

Amen! I’m glad somebody said it. I think every other blog in my feed reader was about Yahoo/del.icio.us.

While on the topic of relevance, do you have any desire to share your filtering algorithm, or at least what it is based on? I’m searching for a way to automate (1) finding relevant blogs and (2) parsing for relevant posts to insert into a meta blog or category. The reason for #2, is that even my favorite blog subscriptions have postings that I have no interest in reading.

I’m wondering if a form of a collaborative filter would work if someone provided a service where all users uploaded their feed lists? I’m going to be posting on my blog later today on the notion of a relevant blog feed service.

Based on this post I’m going to add #3 to the above list …. a redundancy filter.

– bkm

By: Zoli Erdos

Zoli Erdos — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 18:10:03 +0000

Another recent imbalance: the eBay/Skype deal completely overshadowed to Oracle/Siebel one, both announced the same day.

Anyway, I have a PC and an honest/cynical theory:

PC: We all add some value to the discussion by bringing our own points of view. In my own post the “extra” was a comparison of Yahoo vs. Google, with Yahoo catching up/passing Google in certain areas and becoming “cool” again.

Honest/Cynical(?): We all love getting extra Technorati/Google juice…it appears to be mandatory for the top bloggers to mention events like this, even though already well covered, whether they add value or not.. even if just referencing other posts. A not-so-meaningful post on a well-blogged popular subject with a bunch of links yields more Technorati-boost then a well though out long article presenting original content.

By: Simon Brocklehurst

Simon Brocklehurst — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 16:19:41 +0000

You thought that the Delicious coverage was over the top? Surely you can’t have missed incredibly important world event that was The Ben and Mena Show?!

By: Gabe

Gabe — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 06:26:29 +0000

Oh yeah, blogging has a long way to go before you can expect most important stories to be even mentioned, let alone analyzed. Tech.meme would be vastly better if we were there, but we're not. 1:160 suprises me not the least bit. Here's an other experiment: plug any of the headline urls from The Alarm Clock (which lists various multi-million deals) into technorati and see how many are linking. The median number of links is zero.

By: flopdoc

flopdoc — Sun, 11 Dec 2005 03:24:56 +0000

Brad, I like your pondering though I can’t help but wonder if this deal is getting so much blogplay because of the “man bites dog” quality to the story itself. I mean, while it might be important, to most ordinary tech-types like myself the L/PRVD deal was simply a “dog bites man” kind of Wall Street M&A thing.

But here we have a guy who made this hugely popular/influential web destination “on nights and weekends” with no obvious business model, landed some professional money, quit his day job and flipped it in 8 months to one of the major players for (probably) 8 figures. Moreover, Y! has unleashed this kind of lightening three times now (1:flickr, 2:upcoming, 3:delicious) this year alone!

I think it’s the kind of story that gives all technology salarymen (and women) the hope, even if false and fleeting, that someday we too might actually achieve something like this. Hope (and to a lesser degree, envy) springs eternal…