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?

CyndyA

I don't subscribe to Scoble, but he comes up as FOAF. I do subscribe to Arrington, but have been thinking of removing that one too. If I unsubscribe to Louis, he'll never speak to me again.
felix

Curious to see how your excision goes! Thus far, I feel like I've easily freed up a bunch of space to subscribe to more folks (finding them is another thing). The river has slowed down tremendously, but I'm still seeing a lot of what I like to think of the cream of that crop from the signficant number of FoaF links.
StevenHodson

interestingly enough this post came at a time when I was becoming irritated with some of what was flowing through FF but I couldn't put my finger on it. Think I'm going to try some radical surgery and see what happens - hopefully it will refresh the timeline with a little less duplicated noise (and yes I know all about the Hide option but sometimes even that won't cut it).

as well the post ties in with a few other thoughts I have been having so big thanks for that.
logicalextremes

Interesting that you would suggest a course of action that would put someone smack in the middle of most of your conversations, as a way of avoiding you ;-)
felix

@scoble - hah! took a look in there, turns out I'm already subscribed to a goodly portion of them. :)

@noahcarter - echo chamberlains. Nice! I hear you, the internet is often (too often) about extremes and without a personal connection and nuances it's very easy for people to take digital communication the wrong way. But we move on! How did your scoble experiment go?

@mike - definitely. I think that more or less is what happened to me on FF, you start out with the majors because it's who you "know", from there as you see FoaF links you see some other folks that you subscribe to. Before long, you're unsubscribing from Scoble's feed and having him comment on your blog! (I feel famous!! :)
Mike

This is an interesting piece. I've only recently started trying to use FriendFeed regularly, and I'll happily admit that I'm subscribed to a good number of the 'top 12' users you mentioned above. I think a big reason for this is that I really don't know who else to subscribe to so I just pile on in to the echo chamber, joining the techie users while as they discuss tech- if I didn't, I'd have almost nobody else to follow.
It was the same when I joined Twitter. The big thing that changed it for me (and I think a lot of others) was the addition of search. Suddenly I was able to start networking with people in my city, rather than just randomly choosing other users and/ or following big name users like Robert Scoble. This had the effect of taking a lot of folks out of the echo chamber, as we were suddenly discussing local issues with people who were not only in our timezone, but in our neighbourhood. I think FriendFeed needs the same thing- the ability to find users who don't put 'The Internet' in the box that asks where they live. FriendFeed's Rooms are a start , but there's no directory as far as I can tell, so it's not easy to get involved.
noahcarter

This is fascinating - and yes absolutely no offense intended for Scoble, et. al. I suggested this with tongue-in-cheek myself a little while back on FF (http://tinyurl.com/5uj5zn). I got spanked by some echo chamberlains - tho Scoble himself agreed.
Scobleizer

If you want to find new voices to listen to you should watch this feed: http://friendfeed.com/scobleizer/discussion -- this is the feed of people that have caught my attention (and that I've either "Liked" or "Commented on" inside FriendFeed). Subscribe to everyone on that feed that interests you, then unsubscribe from me. I'm watching thousands of people, so that feed is pretty darn good.

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