Overloaded ? Anathema of the modern day Internet- Written By : Haricharan

Posted by Haricharan on May 26, 2011 in Random | 34 comments

Written By : Haricharan

Fifteen years ago, when I was just a lad, trying to “figure” out the Internet and when there was NO GOOGLE [Yes !! You read that right. There was no Google and Yahoo was beginning to step into search] the results were usually limited to 10K pages. For a popular topic the results might come to something like 500K pages. Just 500,000 pages.

 Cut to now, a word like “Facebook” on Google search leads to about 250 million results. Yes, that’s right. 250,000,000 results. A 500X increase in 15 years. That’s an amazing growth, isn’t it ?

 If you had asked me 15 years ago, how I got my information on the Internet, I would have easily shared the resources with you. It would have been hardly a dozen links. Today, there are about half a million sites, each one better than the other, trying to give you the best information possible, in the shortest possible time.

 OK, forget information for the time being. Take Facebook for example. I have some friends, who have about 2000-3000 friends on Facebook. Now imagine this scenario, as I explain. Assume that 50% of your friends are active on Facebook, bringing the total number of active friends to 1000.

 If each one of these friends posts ONE item on their wall or shares one item with their friends, your “unread” feed goes up by 1000. And don’t forget the “likes” and “comments” and “shares” on your post by at least 20-30 of your friends. Regular updates by your groups will also appear on your feed. Some content might be duplicated/triplicated, and will appear again and again on your feed. More cross sharing and information interchange.

Now duplicate the same scenario with Twitter.

 So what’s the big deal ?

To ask that question in a one liner – “How do you identify the spam content in your feed ?” or “How do you prevent yourself from getting overloaded by information ?”

 Here are some useful tips to avoid Information Overload.

Peering Away …

Information Needs are relative. Each person has his/her own perception on the type of Information he requires. You do not have to subscribe/follow/comment just because you see your friends are doing it.

One? Two? Many? …

Are using too many social networks/services ? Unless and until, connecting with people on “n” number of social networks is part and parcel of your daily life and provides you with bread and butter, mercilessly cut down on your social network presence. See which one is going to give you better feed. See which friends are there in the older network but not on the newer one. Delete your account from the unnecessary ones. Be very specific on what you need. Identify your specific areas of interest. You cannot follow every subject in the universe. There are limitations. Realize them and choose subjects you are truly interested in. “Startups” is a very generic term – Choose something like “Startups in Noida/Gurgaon” – these will help you narrow down and avoid unnecessary spam.

Be a Butcher. Be brutal. Be Organized.

Watch your “Useful Stuff” vs. “Noise Ratio”. Unfollow and Unfriend if you find that the content is becoming crap. Stop being a slave to that “Followers” count and “Friends” list. Have a method of organizing your feed. Arrange into groups. You’ll know where to get what information. Every time you want to check a group’s feed, ask yourself this question “Will I regret it tomorrow, if I missed seeing something in this feed ?” If the answer to that question is “NO”, then use the weekend.

Ask yourself WHY do you need the information?

This will help you define your boundaries of what you need and what you do not need. Basically “Useful Stuff” vs. “The Noise”.

In YOU, I Trust !!!

Use People. Yes, We mean it. Use People for your selfish purposes. Don’t get it ? Use People as content-control or as Spam-Filters.

Use specific people, [whom you can trust blindly and whose content you have always relished] to get what you want. Choose experts and subscribe to their feed. These people will bring “only” the best in their fields to their followers, for they have a sense of responsibility towards their domain knowledge.

Scan, Skim, Ignore !!!

Utilize the power of RSS. You will know if any content is worth or not, by simply looking at the RSS headings. That way, you wouldn’t have to actually “read” through an entire blog post, only to find that it was SEO enabled to gain traffic. RSS also helps you to keep track of items you liked on the Internet – Google Reader is one of the best RSS aggregators that I have seen from a long time.

Know your Time !

From the time management perspective, have a definite boundary. Know and set your time for online activities and social media. Anything of real significance can be done in about that time. Anything else, that you’d like to read or follow up and that which can be done offline, do it during your non-online hours. Attention and participation are two distinct important events that involve you personally.

If you are feeling overloaded better get used to it, because the future is only going to get worse.