Aggregator Fatigue
I’m not great at keeping track of things, so tools that help me do that are a huge, uh, help. So, I should have been over the moon when I heard about Friend Feed. According to WIRED’s Compiler blog, the “idea behind FriendFeed is to make it easy for you to organize all your “social web” content in one spot — Facebook updates, Digg posts, del.icio.us bookmarks, Flickr photos, Last.fm music, Twitter posts or Tumblr blogs.”
Clearly, lots of people think these compilers of compilations are a good idea. FriendFeed joins iMinta, Spokeo, and Second Brain in the drive to create one organized hub for all the streams of information we have coming our way. How long before someone designs a service that combines all of them, so you have an aggregator of aggregators of aggregators.
Why did the idea of FriendFeed leave me cool? Maybe it’s that if I really need an aggregator for my aggregators, what that really means is that I have too much information in my life, and the answer is to have less of it, not more organized volumes of it. Am I really more likely actually to read all those RSS feeds, social networking updates if they’re aggregated, or does aggregating just encourage me to keep ever more flows of information coming my way?
On the other, trendwatching, side of things, these ‘aggregator aggregators’ appeal to an appetite for more elegant displays of information…ways of displaying it in an ambient way that I don’t need to pay close attention to until something jumps out at me that demands more attention.
So, here’s a question for you. What’s your preferred way of keeping on top of all the masses of information out there? Are you an RSS addict or a fan of the tattered Moleskine?
February 28th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Well I disagree. I think these compilation blogs are used for attackers to attack people. I’ve been reading an ‘anonymous’ blog through WIRED, and three times I had people trying to get my IP address and access my computer as well. I feel these are just as dangerous as anything else. But I’m just one person.
February 28th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I’m an avid RSS user. I follow many (many) wikis and blogs using RSS – work stuff, the spark wiki (of course), interesting blogs, flickr streams, …
A great RSS client can make all the difference – you can quickly scan only headlines, or read the full articles – it’s up to you.
Lee LeFever has a great video explaining RSS in Plain English:
http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english
Highly recommended if you don’t quite get RSS yet.
February 28th, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Um, do you expect non-RSS folks to respond to a blog post?
As much as I try to adopt a pen and paper approach (hipster pda, thanks nora), I have a similarly unsuccessful arsenal of online attempts: Outlook at the office, backpackit.com, del.icio.us, google reader, google calendar, my own desktop calendar, etc etc etc.
Sometimes it seems I need more than 12 step or 7 habits to get through 1 day.
February 28th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
I need aggregator big time. With twitter, gmail, Facebook and about 80 RSS feeds, I have trouble keeping track of it all even with google reader (believe it or not I do use a lot of these tools for work). Maybe I should just cut back.
J.
February 29th, 2008 at 10:20 am
I hear you, Glenn. I think I have some kind of organization-itis. I try to stick to one plan, but to no avail.