Comments on: tweet. http://aaronbeals.com/2009/03/05/tweet/ drops of philosophy from the punchbowl of oblivion Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:58:36 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: micah http://aaronbeals.com/2009/03/05/tweet/comment-page-1/#comment-31 micah Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:37:08 +0000 http://aaronbeals.com/?p=124#comment-31 I am preparing to enter the world of "smart phones" (whatever that means). The big reason that has pushed me to spend the extra exorbitant amounts on the phone bill is my need to carry a full schedule and contacts with me wherever I go. I will need this as soon as I start managing my own patients and school. However, in looking into the smart phone world, one of the things that interests me is the ability to do both micro blogging, and follow microblogs. However, as you mentioned, there is an information overload right now! I know people that get alerts on their phone whenever one of their friends changes their status on facebook. I don't think I want that much updates. But there are some updates I wouldn't want to miss. I don't know how to "thin the herd" to get what I want. I know that we have talked about some of these ideas before. I really believe that within the next 5 years there will be someone who will be taking advantage of this problem. Some new site like digg, or maybe even an old site with new ideas. I like the idea of digg, but as you mention, everything seems to tend towards the center. You touched on the solution, but did not mention an details- is there anyone out there already working on this? Most of the framework is already coming into place, unfortunately it is not accessible in a way that we need it. You have set up a network of people in Facebook. Unfortunately you cannot use your facebook friends to modify your google reader RSS feed. But I think this is the type of thing we need to have happen. Here is what I imagine will start to happen. Facebook has started allowing you to rate news stories in your news feed so that you can get more of what you like in the future. Thats a start. But now imagine that the news feed was not just things your friends did on facebook, but actual news. You could rate what you like and what you don't like. Your friends would be doing the same thing. What would be neat is if there was then some system that ranked stories for you based on how other people who also liked the same things ranked them. This could get really interesting in the fact that I don't like all the same things my friends like, and I would not necessarily want to see all the stuff that some of my friends thought was great. But I think that there should be a way to determine what items my friends like that I ALSO like by using overlaps of interests. Example: I like computers and the braves. You like Computers, but not the braves. I have other friends who like the braves but not computers, and you also have friends who like computers but not the braves. If I rate a braves news story high, and my non-tech friend rates the same story high, it should be evident that this is probably not a story you are interested in. However, if I rate a story high, and my braves friend isn't interested, but your other tech friend is, then this is probably a story you will like. The two major issue I see with such a system is this: First, privacy, but I am not sure how much of that we have anyways with facebook and google, etc. But the other issue is who reads all the crap and rates it first. I am not sure how any given news item would really get going in the system. Anyhow, I have been thinking on all these things for a while, and someone needs to get around to getting it all together for me! I have been considering using twitter, but as a recent facebook status message confirmed, I didn't really know anyone ON twitter. But if you are there, I think I will probably give it a try! I am preparing to enter the world of “smart phones” (whatever that means). The big reason that has pushed me to spend the extra exorbitant amounts on the phone bill is my need to carry a full schedule and contacts with me wherever I go. I will need this as soon as I start managing my own patients and school. However, in looking into the smart phone world, one of the things that interests me is the ability to do both micro blogging, and follow microblogs. However, as you mentioned, there is an information overload right now! I know people that get alerts on their phone whenever one of their friends changes their status on facebook. I don’t think I want that much updates. But there are some updates I wouldn’t want to miss. I don’t know how to “thin the herd” to get what I want.

I know that we have talked about some of these ideas before. I really believe that within the next 5 years there will be someone who will be taking advantage of this problem. Some new site like digg, or maybe even an old site with new ideas. I like the idea of digg, but as you mention, everything seems to tend towards the center. You touched on the solution, but did not mention an details- is there anyone out there already working on this?

Most of the framework is already coming into place, unfortunately it is not accessible in a way that we need it. You have set up a network of people in Facebook. Unfortunately you cannot use your facebook friends to modify your google reader RSS feed. But I think this is the type of thing we need to have happen.

Here is what I imagine will start to happen. Facebook has started allowing you to rate news stories in your news feed so that you can get more of what you like in the future. Thats a start. But now imagine that the news feed was not just things your friends did on facebook, but actual news. You could rate what you like and what you don’t like. Your friends would be doing the same thing. What would be neat is if there was then some system that ranked stories for you based on how other people who also liked the same things ranked them.

This could get really interesting in the fact that I don’t like all the same things my friends like, and I would not necessarily want to see all the stuff that some of my friends thought was great. But I think that there should be a way to determine what items my friends like that I ALSO like by using overlaps of interests. Example: I like computers and the braves. You like Computers, but not the braves. I have other friends who like the braves but not computers, and you also have friends who like computers but not the braves. If I rate a braves news story high, and my non-tech friend rates the same story high, it should be evident that this is probably not a story you are interested in. However, if I rate a story high, and my braves friend isn’t interested, but your other tech friend is, then this is probably a story you will like. The two major issue I see with such a system is this: First, privacy, but I am not sure how much of that we have anyways with facebook and google, etc. But the other issue is who reads all the crap and rates it first. I am not sure how any given news item would really get going in the system.

Anyhow, I have been thinking on all these things for a while, and someone needs to get around to getting it all together for me! I have been considering using twitter, but as a recent facebook status message confirmed, I didn’t really know anyone ON twitter. But if you are there, I think I will probably give it a try!

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