Slowing Down The Stream: Organizing the Chatter

The futility of all our conversations (posts to tweets) and content (blogs to bookmarking) fleetingly fading away into nothing has always been the elephant in the subconscious of all of us. It is the source of all those lame social media jokes about wasting time on the internet. It is a reason why I've been a huge proponent of Google Reader because it makes it easy to store and search past bookmarks. In the post below, it looks like there are going be more tools that make sense of the clutter. It is time we moved beyond twitter data visualization and create some utility out of the frenzy of daily social activity. Exciting stuff.       
 

From BigSpaceShip and originally from Edward Boches:

The stream moves beyond the moment

I don’t know about you, but I miss 90 percent of what flows through my social networks. Going back and filtering or discovering stuff that might be genuinely meaningful is hard right now.  I can save a tweet, or throw a link into Trunkly, but what if next month I want to search what the 10 top creative directors have shared as links over the past month? What if I want to know what new books have been liked more times by my trusted Facebook or Google + friends?

These capabilities are coming.  New platforms like Postpo.st, while still buggy, could make Twitter a far more valuable resource. I know one company in particular that will soon turn Facebook likes into real social currency. When that happens, we will all have more reasons to encourage social response to our products and content.

Wondering what the value of a “Like” is now? Imagine what happens when it becomes a searchable source of recommendations. Don’t think it matters what someone says about you on Twitter a day or two later?  Think again. For marketers it means sharpening your engagement and content strategy with an understanding of the long term value of a Like or a +1 along with learning to earn rather than buy them, ideally from people whose influence is meaningful.