Streams from the Road: Trends from Friends
On Sunday I spent the afternoon in Half Moon Bay with Robert Scoble, his lovely family and Francine Hardaway (whom I had never met).
For over five years now I have looked to Robert as a beacon for what's next for social media. He got me blogging back in 2004, on Twitter in 2006 and Friendfeed in 2007. I returned the favor (finally) by getting him onto Posterous. Naturally, the conversation turned to what's next.
However, unlike years past, this time we were all hard pressed to come up with a crisp answer. The one clear takeaway, which Robert writes about here, is not to overlook Yelp - which is growing like mad and with the non-digerati set as well.
Beyond Yelp, we discussed augmented reality, the post-iPhone world, lifestreaming/Posterous, a resurgence for blogging and what's next for Twitter and Facebook. However, while it might seem like the world is taking a breather and that innovation is slowing, I see it another way. Everything is becoming social. As a result the noise is only going to get worse.
As I travel many I talk to are having a hard time keeping up. The digerati at least are breathless and frustrated with their overflowing inboxes - RSS, Twitter, Facebook, email, SMS and IMs. The Attention Crash is worsening. And there's no end in sight.
However, as everything becomes more social I believe there will be a boom in curation technologies that help us find the signal in the noise. These apps will help us spot trends from friends. You can spot these everywhere - the Facebook highlights column, PostRank, Feedly, Alltop, PopUrls, Regator and my6sense.
As these take hold, who you follow will become more critical. Follow people like you who share things you're interested in and the signal will rise. Follow noisemakers and the signal fades. This reason is precisely why Robert recently cleaned out his Twitter and Facebook friends after following everyone for years. So Robert remains a sign of what's to come: smarter attention management with the help of smart tools.
