Escaping the Scobleverse
So recently, I’ve been working on a bunch of little Friendfeed projects. The first two I did were quick and dirty stat gatherers, one to figure out other folks you might be interested in by comparing how many things you liked/commented on in common. The other comes at it from a different angle and looks at the universe of people you are connected to via your friends and friends of friends. The second one was a little eye opening for me.
As you browse your way through various people’s FriendZones (use the “rezone” links or else check out the handy links collected by Mitchell) you will notice the same folks coming up again and again in the top 5. And when I say the same folks, I mean Scoble, Arrington and Gray. There are a couple other universes of people - there’s a Friendfeeders center with Buchheit And Taylor as well as geographic/linguistic centers. But I think, more or less this is the origin of the echo chamber effect. Everyone’s listening to the same folks, I know because I’m guilty of it. I’m sure to a greater or lesser extent this is true of most social networks.
As another test, go to Friendfeed and click around on people’s profiles and look at the right nav where it lists their subscriptions. These seem to be the 12 most popular people in a person’s list, alphabetized. See how little it varies - if you see something significantly different from Taylor, Brogan, Messina, Pirillo, Winer, Calacanis, Laporte, Le Meur, mashable, Buchheit, arrington, Scoble, Beale, Rubel and Hawk - you’ve found an outlier.
Nothing against any of those luminaries, indeed they’re there for a reason - they consistently post thought provoking bits and whether you agree with them or not, they get those hamster wheels running. But, since everyone’s subscribed to them, they can have the tendency to dominate the conversation - not consciously just as a network effect.
I’ve been looking to try and broaden my ‘verse a little bit and consciously looking for people who aren’t subscribed to the A-listers. As I come across profiles that vary greatly, assuming they’ve posted something interesting I’ve been subscribing to them. It’s slow going, but it’s happening. My new idea is to unsubscribe from Scoble and Arrington which should theoretically help surface other folks by slowing down the river of news quite a bit. I’ll still be part of that conversation because literally almost everyone I subscribe to is following them, so by Friendfeed’s wonderful friend of a friend effect, I’ll still see what the buzz is about. What’s your subscription strategy?
