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Existentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual.In existentialism, the individual's starting point is characterized by what has been called "the existential attitude," or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Existentialism on wikipedia.

Our problem is Not Information Overload, it is Filter Failure. (a phrase that makes more sense every minute with every new technology or buzz) We can't afford to be asleep and work in social media. We can't possibly keep track of even 10% of the important developments, but it is critical to know and manage the 5 – 8% of the data stream that you do try and keep up with. In this post I will provide some strategies for tuning up and refining your filter system.

First be aware of your meta inputs: facebook, twitter, linkedin, news, and blogs
Next are the direct inputs: email, rss, iGoogle (custom homepages)

Then you have to break your info gathering in to timed chunks. If you are barraged by information all day it will be harder to separate your work (output) from the constant influx of information. I tend to check my feeds (inputs) at several routine times during the day. When I am done, I try to stay focused on my objectives and not let the input channels "leak" into my focused work time.

And then "as a filter" I do my part in curating the information that I am interested in. I am curating mainly for myself, but as people find my social media interests mirror their own they will follow me on twitter or read/subscribe to my blog. At the same time I am pulling down my inputs I will rebroadcast or tag certain information for my own recall, but often for the benefit of others. If you follow me or the "#social" hashtag on Twitter you are likely to see several posts from me during the day. And on facebook you may be overwhelmed by my consumption and production of "content." A recent friend told me they were giving me my own group on facebook so I would not block out all the posts from other friends. And I will often bookmark valuable information on Delicious for quick tagging and retreaval.

Other than that I try and write a post a day on uber.la that further refines my ideas and focus around social media. I have learned, am learning, that content other than social media strategies, belong elsewhere. I am focusing this blog more directly.

So, I am a filter. I am not "curating" my social media inputs for anyone else, but indirectly I guess I am providing a service of "curation," but not at the expense of creating content and opinion myself. If you are only curating, you are not really creating content. So tools like paper.li and other "publishing" platforms can be self-deluding. If you are publishing your "daily" but not adding anything to the conversation I'm not all that interested in subscribing to your output as one of my inputs. If you write something original and thought provoking, I will gladly add you to my stream as an imput.

It's all about I & O. Get it under control and you can process more information while keeping your focus.

@jmacofearth (also seen on Google+: jmacofearth)
permalink: http://uber.la/2012/01/filter-failure/

Check out the Social Media for Business page and these other posts about learning social media:

• Essential Twitter Lessons; Play it Safe, Be Real, and Have a Two-Way Conversation
• Fire Everything! – Social Media Rules of Engagement – Twitter Facebook LinkedIN Convergence
• Do You Play On Social Media Sites? Are You a Playa? Are You "Workin" It All the Time?
• Why Google+ Is Not Competing Against Facebook; The Google+ Platform Play
• Losing My Way on Dell.com < How the Retailer Still Confuses and Coupons Us To Death
• Crack the Motivational Code: Put a Ding In Our Universe and Your Team's Universe
• Work Life Balance and Survival; It's Up to You to Grab It
• Facebook's Community Value is 5% of 5% or 0.25% < A Failure to Communicate
• SEO: You Have to Know Your Search Engine to Understand How to Optimize – Content Marketing
• Going for the One on Google Search is Just a "Phrase Match" Away (Own It!)
• How to Get Useful Business Information Out of Twitter: Hashtags for Social Media Research

It's been a great year. Thanks for being part of it. See the 2011 Summary and Best of 2012!

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Tags: clay shirky, existential, existential social networking, filter failure, filtering, filtering the information overload, i am a filter, information overload, input output filter, social media