Everyday millions of links, photos and videos are shared on the social web via Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and so on.
Our friends, random people we follow and media companies all share content on the social web.
So much is shared that sometimes we tend to miss the things that are more relevant to us. Viral content and eye catching articles seem to have more precedence in our lives.
The social web is full of unlimited information. I mean just look at Twitter's Discover tab. You can practically scroll the thing forever and have an endless amount of content to read. The articles and pictures on that feed are even tailored to your interests and people you follow.
But it's been said in the past many times over and over again quality over quantity. Everything that looks interesting on your feed probably isn't relevant to you.
It sucks because most social products today are built around a centralized real time feed that constantly feeds you new content at any waking moment.
It's the only way products can stay relevant today. Facebook says they provide a more relevant newsfeed to each user based on very complex algorithms. So why would they add the ticker (a real time feed of your fb friend's activity) to their desktop product? Why do people complain that Facebook's mobile app is too boring?
Not once but twice:
So how can this be solved? How can social services deliver more relevant content to their users? Twitter is going to start really focusing on its lists feature and the discover tab in a few months. Facebook has lists too. You can add different pages to a list. I have a tech list with Mashable, Techcrunch and the Next Web. You can also have a list feed with your friend groups such as Close Friends. Twitter pretty much lets you do the same.
But sorry guys I'm not going to switch between lists throughout the entire day.
It's bad enough I have to switch between different apps and websites throughout the day:
At Knok.Me we built a small feature on the current version of the web app called Activity. It's basically a curated Twitter feed around your Contact Graph.
I check it once in a while and I always discover relevant content that I never saw on my Twitter feed. These are tweets from my close friends so chances I'm interested in what they have to say. But the key thing is I didn't have to create a list. These are my contacts, they have my number, I have their number, so chances are we are good friends.
We're probably going to remove this feature temporarily during our upcoming product revamp, just so we can focus on one thing.
But down the line this is an area I want to dabble into. Imagine a feed that pulls in content that your friends have shared all over the social web and delivers it all to you in a relevant stream.
This could be content from Instagram, Foursquare, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, SoundCloud, Rdio, Spotify, and so on. No need to switch tabs or apps.
Until next time,
Dami