Learn to hide, hide, hide. - Robert Scoble

Subscribe to only people you really like reading. You are defined not by who follows you, but by who you follow. Follow brilliant people and you'll probably learn something. - Robert Scoble

Unsubscribe early and often. - Robert Scoble

Block jerks, trolls, and spammers. - Robert Scoble

Follow people who have something to say! If you follow "bacon" you will get "bacon" No need to hide if you follow interesting people! If there are no people here that interest you, maybe you wasting time on Friend Feed? - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Subscribing to everyone you encounter seems like a good idea at first, but you'll probably regret it down the road. Always remember that you don't have to be subscribed to people: using Hide and subscription functions will help keep the noise manageable. - Mark Trapp

If it's an post I want to follow and is likely to have a lot of comments or developments, I click on 'More" > "Link To This Entry" and throw a quick bookmark on that page. - Johnny Worthington

Hide, block noisy services, reduce friend of a friend, and follow people who share your interests or engage in thought provoking conversation. - Louis Gray

Very helpful so far. Thank you! :-) - Chris Baskind

What is your definition of 'noise', Chris? IMO, it's relative - Mona Nomura

I can get behind Robert's, "Block jerks, trolls, and spammers." I would add boorish behavior to that list. I learn something new everyday. - Mathew A. Koeneker

Hide early, Hide often, Hide without regret or remorse. - DGentry

I don't think the idea of noise is relative, Mona: each person might have different sets of content they consider noise, but the methods for combatting it or reducing it are universal. What is considered noise is up to the individual to decide. - Mark Trapp

Make liberal use of the hide feature to reduce noise. See Louis Gray's post from mid-May http://www.louisgray.com/live... - Pete Delucchi

These recommendations are hard to stick to, often I subscribe to someone who has a few trivial posts, but occasionaly (perhaps greater than that) emits a really excellent post. Some of them are boorish, aggressive even downright arrogant, but I can't block them for that alone. - Mo Kargas

Mona: Just material which distracts you from the stuff you like best. You're right, of course: one person's signal is another's noise. - Chris Baskind

Chris: I don't hide much, I just filter via services, or constantly refresh. I find that the more people I subscribe to, the more I perspective I gain. Often times I'm sick of seeing the same content, and it's beneficial (for me) to see variety. Especially since it prevents myopia. : ) Diversity FTW!! - Mona Nomura

obvious, but be very selective in who you follow. my rule of thumb is i'll only follow 2x as many people as follow me. not sure if that's logical, but it means i'm only following 86 to 58 followers... - Trent Olson

Don't follow anyone who "likes" more than 50 times in a week. Sorry, Scoble, that means you are gone! (Click on someone's "me" tab to see how many times they've liked things). Or, at minimum, make sure the things they "like" match what you like (since that's what decides your "Friend of a Friend" items. - Robert Scoble

short of following a recommended person, implying reading everything that person posts (including very personal or insider stuff), there is no easy way to sift through and take only important contents. even estabilishing following is not easy on FF. Noiseriver at least complements and introduces concept of interests, which must eventually must eventually bring more focus on signal - Hayk H.

Subscribe to high node people and let them be your filter. In other words, take full advantage of the 'friend of' feature. - AJ Kohn

Take a look at someone's feed before you follow them. See if it's crap. If so, don't subscribe. I have FF setup to Hide Twitter and other microblogging services that don't have comments/likes. I have manually hid stuff maybe twice. The good stuff will usually float back to the top. - Rahsheen ™, Coach of FF

I filter the heck out of services -- particularly status firehoses. I'm putting less of that stuff back in the stream, also. Decoupled Disqus, Digg, and StumbleUpon this evening. - Chris Baskind

Wow, I just signed up a second account, followed all these rules, and, damn, no noise! I wish I could share that account with all of you. - Robert Scoble

Where I've actually called people out on this in the past (on other services), I'd say don't feel obligated to follow people back (or at least until you've mastered 'Hide, Unsubscribe, and Block). - Charlie Anzman

To the superconnector point; I'd say if you are concerned with noise, you probably don't want to be subscribed to more than 3 or 4 super-connectors: that is, people who are well-followed (and thus, generate a lot of discussion), people who like a lot, or people who reshare a lot. Superconnectors have a lot of value for finding a bunch of content without being subscribed to a lot of people, but unless you have a high interest overlap with one of them, unsubscribing from them will decrease a lot of noise. - Mark Trapp

Mark: the problem there is the "recommended" list. http://friendfeed.com/setting... -- it's full of superconnectors. - Robert Scoble

Whom are you trying to kid now Robert us or yourself? You thrive on the noise. :-) - Mathew A. Koeneker

Chris just get everyone angry at you then they will block you! You will have much less noise and more relevancy! lol - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Robert, absolutely. It could probably be mitigated with a nice note saying "We recommend only a few of these people at first!" The other thing to note is that list is definitely based on who you're subscribing to. In theory, if you ran the importer before the recommended page, and there were a lot of your friends already on Friendfeed, that recommended list will look a lot different, and only show super-connectors within your group of friends. It's starting to occur already, but we're still in this anomalous pseudo-global community of early adopters, where everyone is subscribed to everyone. - Mark Trapp

Mathew: I love the noise, but sometimes you like to be able to see just the news. :-) - Robert Scoble

Mark: ahh, good point. In this case my account has no friends, so I'm just seeing what it would recommend to a total newbie. - Robert Scoble

This would actually be a creative use for rooms, once that gets sorted out a bit more. 'Suggested people if you like .... ' - Charlie Anzman

I like the noise too. BTW, Charlie makes a point I'd planned on raising in an article: using rooms to form small networks of what Robert was calling "close fiends" earlier. - Chris Baskind

well, now, i've been here for a week or so, and i have eleven people following me. i have received two likes and one comment. i appreciate the subscriptions (really, i do!), but that says a lot to me about how this noise issue could get out of hand. i can't give tips, though, because i don't have a noisy experience yet! - idnan

Best way to reduce the noise? Don't follow anyone :) That, and _get a room_ - Vincent van Wylick

I only visit the "friends" tab maybe once/hour. 90% of my FriendFeed surfing is through my page's comments/likes, other people's pages & discussion, searches & the everyone page, and the "best of" page. - Mitchell Tsai

Rooms are probably the ticket, they can be invite only, can't they? - Mo Kargas

Why would you want to be in a private room where everyone agrees with you? Narcissism? - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

some people call it noise. I call it serendipity. That said, you can hide, you can get a room, limit your subscriptions, or stick to good ole RSS. But that would be boring, no? - ~C4Chaos

"serendipity" nice! Sounds like "house" music! Rock on Baby! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Igor: No, to concentrate concentrate the things groups of people like. Right now, I'm quite content with managing the firehose like anyone else. But I've never forgotten John Nesbitt's "Megatrends" (1984), and making mini-Friendfeeds rooms -- private networks -- might be an option for some people. Mo: Yes, they could be by invitation. - Chris Baskind

I think one of my most interesting experiences while I traveled is when Lamanites boarded the bus I was traveling in Peru, wearing Ponokeo mask sporting K47s checking documents! I did not know if I would be alive a few minutes later! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Chris I think it is very important to adopt to changes than to ghetto yourself! If you know what is coming spread the gospel to your followers! - Igor The Troll יִצְחָק

Igor: hehe. "serendipity" do sound like house music. anyway, for those who can't stand FF noise, you can create a private FF room (e.g. House of Private Serendipity) and plugin the FF RSS of your FF buddies whom you consider non-noisy. i've tried it already. it works but it becomes boring without the comments and likes. the "close friends" idea would really be a neat feature -- e.g. select 5 to 10 circle of friends, like that Alltel commercial. - ~C4Chaos

I understand what you're saying about forming ghettos. But building private networks doesn't mean you must also isolate yourself from the general community. I'm sure I'm not alone in belonging to several small networks outside FF, for instance -- how is this any different from basing one within the system? - Chris Baskind

Chris - I'm actually in the middle of writing a post on explaining exactly how I pick my subscriptions. But to sum it up, I pick my subscriptions wisely. - Justin Korn

Can't be too wise. You follow me. ;-) - Chris Baskind

the bottom line for me is this: FF is an excellent service. it would be cool to have a one-click feature to reduce the noise but i'd rather look at it as a continuous balancing act of refining and discovery. the unsubscribe and *hide* features already put the refining process at our fingertips - http://bit.ly/2YUKax - our serendipitous discoveries depend on our ability to tolerate a certain amount of noise. this balancing act is what makes FF more fun than plain ole' RSS. - ~C4Chaos

I use yahoo pipes to filter the RSS of my output feed. I only let it pass items with interesting words for me. Now it is pretty basic but I guess I could do some regular expression to do better filtering - Arturo Servin

Robert - I hear you on the "just the news" please sometimes. But then it comes down to how you want to get that news and what types of news. FF as it stand now is an excellent filter for all that is tech so much so that I have stopped reading much of my tech RSS feeds. I try and get my own multiple sources on other news which does mean that I am not first out of the blocks on quite a lot but I am ok with that. - Mathew A. Koeneker

The "one shot" hide. If Leo Laporte tweets, I know it's going to linger with the peanut gallery. A quick hide makes it go away. But I may not want to perma-hide his Twitter stream. Perma-hiding is for people's service streams that are just repeaters and echo chambers. - Paul Reynolds

Hide and don't-seek. :) - Rishabh Mishra (p248)

This is my advice: http://techiteasy.org/2008... In short, using rooms for dedicated purposes allows for targeted two-way communication. Instead of having to subscribe to 1000s to get a question answered, you go to rooms specialised in a certain topic. - Vincent van Wylick

Matthew has a good point (1) are you trying to be first out of the block with breaking news - and thus want a wide network to hear stuff (ala "everyone") (2) Do you want to hear "best of" and ALL of your close friends (3) some other combo? - Mitchell Tsai

For things like limited-invitation invites & closed beta sites opening, I might want an equivalent of e-mail color-highlights or a "top priority tab". (2) Otherwise, I'm ok with being at the back of the bus, which is why I often go off-internet for 3-7 days. But I want to see the cool stuff I missed. Anothe reason why the fast-moving friends tab is less & less useful for me...and DIRECTLY visiting my friends is MORE important. Who do I directly visit, and how often? Those are my noise-handling strategy - Mitchell Tsai