Mo' thoughts on Filtering.

Read Write Web has a good post noting that aggregation is not the issue for Social Media, filtering is. Agree totally, as you can see from earlier posts we wrote here and here for example. In an interesting note RWW notes that in fact some of the newer aggregators actually add to the problem:

With so many different platforms to aggregate, noise levels are surging. An underlying issue in the level of noise is that some of these services were not made to interact with one another. Users of social aggregation tools should understand that what you may consider noise is actually a side-effect of using a social aggregation platform.

Anyway, filtering and how it works is proving to be harder to define that knowing that we need it. RWW notes that:

Filters are rapidly becoming a pertinent issue for developers of social media services. As a result, social aggregation platforms are in the perfect position to lead the pack. While this is no easy task and one that cannot be solved in its entirety, it would help resolve another issue social media users are facing: courtesy.

Instead of being able to freely add whatever service you wish, some users like myself are taking into account what others may consider noise on certain services as a courtesy to members. In essence, you are becoming our own filter. You may refrain from important other services for fear of being labeled as "noisy".

Its an interesting thought, and I can see that members of a community may wish to self manage a commons in this way - but sadly it is the sort of system that is prone to cheating behaviour, spamming for example, so it is likely to break down unless the cost of removing spam is roughly the same as spamming.

No, longer term we believe that filtering has to be a more active system embedded in the knitting of the UI, and must be user set.