| ChelseaGirl | <wondered> if that might be the case  |
| ChelseaGirl | <compares> it to a musician she knows. Hs indie band'd CD was playing in a record sore and turns out the girl working there knew him too... |
| ChelseaGirl | says | the girl said, "EVERYBODY knows Pietro! one might also say, EVERYONE knows striatic |
| striatic | was | thinking more that he knew too many people, not that too many people knew him. |
| vanlal | says | You can choose to un-follow certain plurkers. They remain your friends and tey can see your private plurks but you won't see their streams |
| ChelseaGirl | says | OK then. BUt I know Pietro and he knows me, etc |
| striatic | was | n't talking about plurk specifically. |
| clickykbd | /me wonders if stri is staring at extremely long logs in SocialThing. heh. |
| Courtney P | feels | knowing too many people is a new social problem introduced by the internet age. |
| Courtney P | says | Although it enables us to keep up with more people, it's also hard to keep up with so many people! Also, it causes tons of distractions. |
| striatic | says | why don't services have better tools for following large groups of people in meaningful ways? |
| clickykbd | I think the only approaches i've seen are in the data-visualization arena... and usually they just feel like toys and less than useful. |
| striatic | says | the solution isn't in the visualization so much it is in weighting the information by relevancy and importance. |
| striatic | says | for example, imagine if everyone had five "points" per day, to spend marking their own plurks as "cool". all other posts would be "neutral" |
| striatic | says | you then use a threshold to present a manageable amount of information to the reader .. |
| striatic | says | depending on the amount of noise, sometimes the neutral posts make it through the filter, ones with "cool" points always would though. |
| striatic | thinks | there are a lot of different ways to handle it beyond "self ranking" .. that's just a start that isn't some visualization based toy. |
| vanlal | How do you define cool? Setup word filters? Anything that mentions beer or breasts is automatically cool? |
| striatic | says | no. you define what your own cool posts are. it's dead simple. people weight their own posts using a limited allotment of points. |
| GreyArea | thinks | but what if I actually would have liked another post of yours? (and miss it because of the filter) |
| striatic | says | without such a system, you'd miss it because it'd be lost in the total volume of posts anyway. |
| GreyArea | says | not necessarily. It might leap out at me because of a word or a phrase. But now, it's hidden unless I do something to "view all" etc |
| GreyArea | says | I frequently scroll through my plurk timeline and stop when something interesting flashes by. |
| striatic | says | that's essentially random, and people who do very few plurks are drowned out by people who do many. punishing casual use isn't good. |
| GreyArea | says | No. You THINK it's random. But I'm picking the ones I like. With your system. I'd be forced to look at what someone else likes. |
| striatic | says | you can still reward active users, since even their "non essential" plurks will get read by low density subscribers. |
| striatic | says | you're looking at what the person saying the thing would most like you to read. that isn't bad. |
| GreyArea | says | What if that doesn't interest me? |
| striatic | says | in real life, plurk would be like everyone in a room either yelling at the top of their lungs or being completely silent. |
| GreyArea | says | You were the one that pointed out the other day that online doesn't have to be an analogy to real life  |
| striatic | says | it doesn't have to be, but attention is, ultimately, zero sum. that's all this addresses, and it as true online as off. |
| GreyArea | says | The assumption you're making here is that sheer volume will take away more of my attention. |
| GreyArea | says | I agree that is often the case. But it doesn't have to be. |
| striatic | says | it does have to be. more is more. i mean, you end up with this at a certain point:  |
| striatic | says | |
| striatic | says | grrr ... tinyurl.com/6qk2tf |
| GreyArea | says | No you don't. A human being doesn't end up with 74,000 friends. |
| vanlal | It'd be interesting to weigh in plurkers that one routinely responds to and vice versa. i.e. if you exchange plurks more often with X she .. |
| vanlal | ... weighs more for you, etc. |
| GreyArea | says | Now that seems a better idea... |
| striatic | says | vanlal, that punishes lurking. you might be interested in something without feeling the need to respond. |
| striatic | thinks | it'd be a good idea for an app or service that's specifically focused on interaction and is willing to sacrifice lurking. |
| vanlal | One could bookmark interesting threads and have those weighed in. |
| vanlal | The ultimate algorithm would be complex tracking many varied factors. |
| striatic | says | another problem with that is that you'll end up with the same stuff from the same people over and over. |
| striatic | thinks | a self ranking method can actually promote diversity by compensating for homogeneity when it becomes an issue. |
| striatic | thinks | filters are less important on plurk, where people want a firehose to the face, and more applicable to facebook.. |
| striatic | says | since both casual and hyperactive users have to coexist in that space. |
| vanlal | I don't think anyone really wants a firehose to the face. Sure, all the A listers do but they don't really listen even to themselves |
| vanlal | Filters are essential in any social interaction. More so with plurk, than Facebook , where everyone has a firehose and isn't afraid touse it |
| vanlal | says | I was having this conversation with a friend. |
| GreyArea | wants | a simple way to bookmark this conversation! |
| vanlal | Post a Plurk feature REQ |
| striatic | says | people firehose you on facebook all the time with app invites and photos and all kinds of stuff. they firehose you without even knowing it. |
| vanlal | says | Let me restate - Everyone wants to firehose everyone else in the face. No one wants a firehose in the face. |
| striatic | says | i don't want to firehose anyone in the face. |
| striatic | says | i'd say most people don't, actually .. the problem is that the only way to deal with this currently is to make fewer posts. |
| striatic | says | and then you're over-run. you've effectively ceded the network to the blabbermouths. |
| GreyArea | says | the people with the app invites, the blabbermouths are the same people who constantly fwd emails to everyone. Simple solution: plonk! |
| GreyArea | says | That's how you deal with volume. |
| striatic | says | there's a social penalty for plonk, so people don't do it. also, it's a baby/bathwater situation. |
| GreyArea | says | With your analogy, I could choose to stand in a crowded room listening to everyone yelling. Or I could pull my friends out and talk to them. |
| striatic | says | we have page rank, decent spam filters, personally targeted context sensitive ads .. and yet social networks are still simple directories. |
| GreyArea | says | As you pointed out, the ideal situation is to weigh relevancy and importance. How you do that is the real problem. |
| striatic | says | i'm talking about moving from yahoo version 1.0 -human edited web directory to the sophistication of page rank. it's a similar leap. |
| GreyArea | says | Your method gives too much importance to user-selected importance. Like search engines only looking at meta tag keywords. |
| striatic | says | that's a poor analogy. unlike meta tags, there's a limited currency. and social costs if you lie. |
| striatic | says | besides, right now users select importance by choosing to say something or not. |
| striatic | says | and people already do what i'm talking about .. posting the most important stuff to a blog, somewhat less important stuff to twitter |
| striatic | says | but you end up having to post and follow multiple services which is inelegant and annoying. |
| striatic | says | plus the blog might not even hook into the social network .. lame. |
| GreyArea | says | Your original problem was for A service to have a better tool to follow a large group of people. Multiple services is another ball game now. |
| striatic | says | not really. people are trying to use "more services" as a way to better break up large groups of people .. i'm saying that doesn't scale. |
| striatic | says | that's why we're seeing thing like friendfeed and social thing crop up .. but they need to solve the original problem as well, and aren't. |
| clickykbd | speaking of monopolizing my social network. (just caught up on the whole thread). haha. |
| clickykbd | FriendFeed is at least allowing you to "like" entries... and providing views sorted by likiness. |
| clickykbd | But it's not self ranking, nor is it a very smart algorithm... popular posts with many contacts still trickle up and causal users down. |
| striatic | thinks | this is all because SF wants to be LA soooo badly, it feels the the need to create all these model train set sized star systems. |
| clickykbd | hey. but now I can rub elbows with the wordy and prolific! haha. |
| adonoho | Constraints increase signal versus noise. When a plurk costs you money, as it does on my phone, I think carefully about who I follow. |
| striatic | thinks | self ranking would be useful for browser vs. mobile alone, potentially. pushing only the most important stuff to mobile devices. |
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