The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. Hi, My name is Bob...and I am a social media addict. Your choice of social media is growing by the day: IM, blogs, RSS, SMS, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Many of us have so many sources of information that several hours a day can be wasted while we're engrossed in these social media tools. The other day I was so desperate for information that I started licking between the crevices of my keyboard.
It's lucky for you, then, that filtering is being incorporated into more than just e-commerce sites. I'm talking about social media aggregators, like FriendFeed. You can either spend less time searching for what you want or more time looking at more than you would normally. It depends on whether you have a stubborn passion for specific interests or you enjoy expanding your horizons. I would say most people would choose the former, but filtering can also help people on the other end of the spectrum: people who are curious about the interests of others, but who can recognize trash when they see it.
I've already somewhat explained collaborative filtering, but the actual definition is even more ambiguous than even I've managed to make it. There are actually three main types of collaborative filtering: the first, Active Filtering, involves people of similar interests rating different items and sharing the information with other people. One of the problems with this, however, is that it relies too heavily on people's biased opinions, which are also hard to come by. Passive filtering is when a web browser collects information about a user by recording their actions (views, purchases, links, etc.). This provides a much larger data sample than just active filtering. Then there is item-based filtering, which uses ratings to group various items together for comparison (think Amazon).
With better filtering options on these aggregated services, some of the noise that results from adding accounts from unrelated social platforms can be quelled. But don't think you still won't be able to aggregate as many accounts as you want. In the meantime, you can practice the art of self-filtering by taking other people's preferences into account when aggregating another platform.
Click ahead to the next section to find out what The Filter is doing to incorporate the latest in filtering technology.
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