Information Down 3 Points Today
Posted by Jamie Hutson | Filed under social media, web 2.0
Thanks to the proliferation of the internet into our lives, Information is losing its value. Alot of this is due to simple economics (supply vs. demand), while the demand for information isn’t necessarily growing any more rapidly, the supply of information and the relative ease with which it is found is making information less valuable. Let me be clear, I think this is a good thing.
The amount of information online is more than all of the information everywhere else, in every other medium combined. People can find what they want in an instant. The problem with all of this is that the trust value of this information is going down with it. Wikipedia, is a great resource (one of my favorite) however it is a collection of different people’s thoughts and explanations on a topic. But it is not a primary source, it is a secondary or often an indirect third source, which brings into question its reliability. Not as a quick reference, but as a solid, money on the line, reference.
The ability for literally anyone to contribute to wikis and blogs, combined with a plethora of search options (Google, Yahoo, etc) and mix in a growing selection of aggregators (digg, mashable, RSS…) and you have so many different options to get your information and news from, it can be hard to handle. Much of it is the same, but today it takes some human filtering to get down and find the exact information you want, from a source you trust.
Today, many people reported that Twitter beat the USGS in reporting the earthquake in China today, so there is clearly huge value in these instant communication services. I see there being a huge future in aggregation or search that can filter out all the noise and select the most relevant and trusted sources to provide us with the information we are seeking.
