There's a reason I follow 100,000 on Twitter and... - Robert Scoble

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There's a reason I follow 100,000 on Twitter and 25,000 on friendfeed: I get to see patterns no one else is seeing. Here's some:

June 16 - Comment - Like - Share

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I saw the Chinese earthquake while it was happening. 45 minutes before CNN. - Robert Scoble

I see that Bing is gaining steam today. - Robert Scoble

I saw that people were frustrated on Saturday with CNN. - Robert Scoble

The Matrix? - Matthew DeVries

Matthew: in a way, yes. - Robert Scoble

I see new software, services, ideas before most other people. - Robert Scoble

How do you deal with the noise? - Kevin Lim

How do you filter out all the noise? I find myself constantly unfollowing people to make Twitter more relevant. - Michelle

I've noticed this effect in just following 40 or 50 more people on Twitter. - Bill Kinney

And I get to see how they react to news, like Opera's new browser this morning. - Robert Scoble

The Robert Scoble version of "Google Earth" - Pete Blackshaw

Big Brother style - Richard Lai

So that's like "Scoble trends" :) Like Twitter trends, but for emerging events. - Kirill Petrovsky

Jinx. - Michelle

Michelle: noise is like the lawn. It lets you see the flowers. - Robert Scoble

So effectively you start a topic on Twitter, and then use friendfeed as a chat room? - Richard Lai

i follow almost 60,000 on twitter now and love it. totally agree scoble. - Jason Pollock

Hoping for some improvements to Tweetdeck groups - just not enough yet - Kirsten Hamstra

yeah but how do you SEE the patterns, you cannot read them all do you? - Hans Mestrum

You should be talking about all the spammers on Twitter because that is the trend - paul mooney

Robert is our filter, we follow robert who sees the patterns and reports it back. - Ray Slakinski

Here's a hint: I don't always follow 125,000 people. In friendfeed I have lists of only 150 people. THEY HAVE VERY LITTLE NOISE. - Robert Scoble

He has a socket in the back of his head ;-) - Richard H

Also, in friendfeed I can remove noise by displaying only items that have gotten a like. Like this: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Robert Scoble

Thank goodness we have you, Robert, to do that, so we don't have to. - Jason Mayoff

make sense following "likes" - Hans Mestrum

paul: spammers don't bother me. They add about as much value as people who tell me they had a jelly sandwich for lunch. - Robert Scoble

Jeff Pulver Followers every p0rn site and spammer who Follows him, check his Following list - paul mooney

paul: here's a little trick: I do most of my following in friendfeed. Why? Better friend management. - Robert Scoble

I also have issues bc what I have to follow for work is very different from what I want to follow, but that is another issue. - Michelle

Twitter has gone the way of email, that's why Twitter Search doesn't work - the system is overwellemed! - paul mooney

Bill: actually you only need to follow a few people to get a pretty good look at the good stuff. Why? If something is good everyone talks about it. - Robert Scoble

Michelle - same issue here! work vs. professional following and juggling multiple accts - Kirsten Hamstra

paul: it still works for me. I just skip over the spam. My mind likes seeing spam and noise. It helps me see the news. - Robert Scoble

For the rest of us - just friend Scoble -- you might hear about stuff delayed 5 minutes or so. - Brian Sullivan

Where do I get one of these neat sockets in the back of my head, I get dizzy just trying to follow 2K people. - dabitch

All the Twitter marketers are auto-Following the spammers, it's a perfect storm - paul mooney

paul: in email I don't care about the spam either. I can always scan a page of spam and find my boss' emails for some reason. - Robert Scoble

reminds me of roy - I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tan Hauser Gate. - mike "glemak" dunn

Brian: that is true. My like feed at http://www.friendfeed.com/scoblei... is pretty good. - Robert Scoble

That's why people who don't follow others on Twitter are kinda of missing the point, aren't they? I love seeing when people are being followed by 30,000 people but following 2. - Curt Mercadante

BTW Robert, props on following the Iran elections. Hopefully this will open our eyes to what has been happening in Egypt, Russia, Pakistan and a host of other countries for decades. If Benezir Bhutto were alive and had been elected like she would have been, we'd live in a different world. - Michelle

so robert - could you be an android ;) - mike "glemak" dunn

Robert: so in a way, if you follows all that people, we actually needs to follow only one person, which is you. here's why: it is most likely that you'll post about the major stuff that you read about in your friends stream - which make you a better filter than any other service around :) (I'm following lots of people too because I simply like to find and read about new and exciting things) - Orli Yakuel

I totally agree with you Robert. It's like holding your hand into a jet of water and drinking from time to time. - nik

you need to have the spirit of sharing good stuffs to others, or the good only reaches you but does not spread out. - K.D.

I cannot get people to join FriendFeed. I even did a video showing them how great it is. I cannot seem to follow that many more on Twitter than 200 and keep up with them. I tried Tweetdeck, but it just used too much RAM for me. - Hummie

The REAL trick here is that you have a natural gift for scanning with your eyes. I would follow many more people if I could scan (and absorb) information as quickly as you do. Since I don't, I follow you. You are among my first line of defense. - Bettina Tizzy

All these fortune cookie Tweets are the work of spammers, sooner or later comes the link to the get-rich-quick site - paul mooney

Robert you are awesome! ★ - weirdchina

@scobleizer I want to see the matrix also... still several K from where you are. - Robert Freeze

Robert, do you read http://friendfeed.com/public also? - bnoise

i follow more on ff - junrxu

Sounds a little like Joey Osmond - Robert I see patterns Scoble? Definitely agree though - there is useful information that can be pulled from the right people's twitter/friendfeed that gives trends developing real time, as long as sea changes over longer periods - Tom Tubbs

Hmmm, why is http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... faster than http://friendfeed.com/public ? - Greg Byrne

omg that is impossible to read - bnoise from IM

holy shit robert... i just had my mind blown watching your live friendfeed. this whole time i've been trying to control the chaos... keep people organized into neat piles. wow... wowow - Eric Nakagawa

You are so right! - Thomas Chai

@Hummie: I had the same problem with TweetDeck. Try SeesmicDesktop, it has similar functionality but less RAM-greedy - Ashalynd

Robert do you have a link to the video you did showing 'how' you manage all this information flow? I would enjoy watching it again. - Matt Perry

here's another interesting search which will show all scoble's friends' items that have at least 1 like: http://friendfeed.com/search... only wish this were realtime - Mike Chelen

Robert - cool post, excellent comments - same exact reason I embraced FF in early days and stayed here!! Love it - Susan Beebe

Robert since I have been following you I have done a complete 180 on how I felt about social networking before. I mean the media is fast but social networking works at the speed of thought. Now if I could only figure out how to interact behind the Army & Airforce firewall... I felt lost today at work... LOL - Nathan McClain

Matt, I think that video is this one: HOw I Read Tweets: http://www.kyte.tv/scoblei... - Robert Scoble

Orli the problem with only following me is that I need to sleep once in a while and I also might not follow people you care about. For instance, if you are into celebrities and not technology I totally wouldn't be good for you to follow. - Robert Scoble

we know what I care about and I'm glad that I'm following you! but I got the point, and I agree of course. I was just kidding I guess.. - Orli Yakuel

Great video. Watching it again now... - Matt Perry

Yeah some wild connections are made by watching a lot more than a few friends. Wonder why most people don't "get" that? Researchers should follow a ton of people and sources. - Jack Humphrey

Jack: actually, people should do BOTH follow a ton of people and sources as well as follow just a very select group of people. I wish I could share my groups (er, lists of friends) with you all. THEY are going to be the secret to filtering in the future. - Robert Scoble

I'm lazy. I use your feed as my pre-filtered source of good/interesting general information. Thanks for doing a lot of the hard work for us (or at least me). - John Meagher

Robert I think you are 100% correct, but it touches on what people should have already been doing, and that's getting as much information as they can from as many sources as they can and putting the facts together for themselves. I think traditional media's days of fact-less reporting are thankfully numbered. This is truly Fair and Balanced!!! - Nathan McClain

Robert: People still won't get it. Seeing patterns is a talent or a skill. You can aid it, however, by showing or demonstrating how you filter for patterns. How do you scan messages and discern a pattern? How do you focus on a few without missing the patterns of the many? Might make a good presentation/blog. You probably already did it, right? - Alan Eggleston

I don't think it requires following 125,000 people to be aware of the same trends. - stretta

stretta: it does not, but I get to see small things that many people don't. - Robert Scoble

Robert - and I appreciate those "small things" :) --- they look like startups! and new bright shiny tech toys! - Susan Beebe

imagine an AI system that can analyze all that data for you and generate illuminating reports... - Matt Jaunich

Matt: I can and lots of geeks are working on building just that. - Robert Scoble

Thanks for the post. I immediately added the "like" search to my saved searches. - Sean Powell

I follow 60,000 and I see a white light at the end of a tunnel. It's getting closer... - Rick

You must do this by o s m o s i s....no other way? Intuition and speeed reading. - Ziona Etzion

Yeah. Robert, I don't read your stuff and I don't know if you're going to read this. But regardless, I know you're well famed and this is the first thing I skimmed across of yours that would indicate that it's deserved. I follow options in the same way., eg almost literally. I have TD StrategyDesk open right now, ThinkOrSwim, Power E*Trade Pro, OptionsXPress, and the regular TD Ameritrade website open as well. Doing this allows me to view and be ware of data and turning points in many views and levels - Matt Kaufman

Robert: If you could follow all 100,000+ people from Twitter in real time within friendfeed would you? - Garin Kilpatrick

Twitter is a helpful automatized hammer for the main engine, which is friendfeed ; - ewing2001akaNicomedy2010

I don't see why you couldn't just save a search on everybody's posts with likes on FF though and still follow only those you actually read daily + any protected accts? Even build smarter searches than that. You increase the number of people following you by lots more your way of course. - Thomas Bøhm from BuddyFeed

Sorry. The trend watching and analytical part would be the same, wouldn´t it, except that I now see that the saved searches don´t update in realtime. Yet. - Thomas Bøhm from BuddyFeed

That's why realtime filters would be awesome. All the relevant stuff, without refreshing. - bnoise from IM

No doubt... - Thor

Nice post :-) Two questions though: - Patrick Mackaaij

1. What sets apart the 100,000 people you "follow" to glance at once in a while from the everyone feed? - Patrick Mackaaij

2. (a Friendfeed question): Do you still read this since I posted this comment a few hours after the initial conversation. - Patrick Mackaaij

How did you find so many people to follow? How does an average user find so many to follow? - Bas

Patrick: I was on stage and couldn't be on friendfeed. - Robert Scoble

Patrick: the people I follow are usually much more tech interested and demonstrate early adopted behavior than the larger public audience. - Robert Scoble

Never mind all this. How's Opera? Got a link this morning and thought I might try it (what a surprise, me trying something). - Francine Hardaway

This is how I tell other people about Robert: http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009... and it's how I'm slowly patterning web learning (when I have time to interact and learn) - Mark Essel

Scoble Earth(TM), Pete Blackshaw? ;) - Tyson Key

Robert: Is this a Mandelbrot pattern? The chaos has a look, a feel and a taste, as in the jet of water analogy. You're the freakin' hydrologist with the dousing rod. - Phil Boiarski

Robert: I was not expecting a real time response but was wondering how you keep track of all conversations you engaged with on FF. How can you see where comments are added? - Patrick Mackaaij

I'm with Robert, just not with such a big of a scale. My point: I am noise and you are noise. Let's not forget there's a baby in that bathwater before one takes a blanket anti social network view of social networking! - Mike Lewis

Robert, you are a living, breathing supernode, and I thank you for it :-) (Supernodes: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-95...) - Andy Bold

makes sense 2 me - Ron Hagenhoff

OMG Robert I agree 100% BEFORE Twitter screwed with the @replies censoring us from seeing all that people tweeted... I could scroll through my home page and get the pulse of the world on Twitter! A beautiful site! Comparatively now: Twitter is silent. - Arleen Anderson

Robert, I'm having a jelly sandwich for lunch tomorrow. ;-) - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge

All major television networks/news outlets should hire Scoble and heed this advice based on this weekends events in Iran. They need to learn how to listen, filter and understand how social media can deliver real-time information around the world. - E-Advocate Network

böring - yazarcizer

What tools are you using to keep track of the all that flows past? - Inbox2 Team

Yeah, Robert is an Androïd! Each time I'm gotta 'like' 1 of his entries, comment, or visit links, I ask myself if I'm doing this because he is Scoble! Of course not: it's just because he's always pointing on valuable infos. And this is good for IT stuffs, for early adopters, for business. - Thierry R. Andriamirado

So, Scoble proves that the best search & filter engine is Human. (Nah.. I'm not a 'groupie', never will ;-)) - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Curt, pple who don't follow others and hope to be followed & heard are obviously wrong. Social Media is not "Ego Media" ;) - Thierry R. Andriamirado

Patrick, IMO Robert uses FriendFeed's search to find infos, & FF's email features to keep track of conversations & updates - Thierry R. Andriamirado

or maybe you also miss some important ones because of the noise: like the patterns known by 99% of the users that have less than 1000 followers? does that make sense? - Ouriel Ohayon

isn't that a little too much? do you even have time for anything else? Is it worth knowing about an earthquake some 30-40 minutes earlier than most people than spending some time with your real life friends? - stefan

Stefan, the point is: if you want to spend as much time as possible with your real life friends, you have to be as efficient as possible during the time you spend in front of the computer. The more information you drink in a short time, the faster you can identify patterns. - Brome

Best answer I've heard for why I'm also ok with following and listening to a ton of people on various platforms: "noise is like the lawn. It lets you see the flowers. - Robert Scoble" - Leslie Poston

Wow, that's a clever use of the platforms! - gareth【ツ】

We need information so we can decide while staying in touch with reality. -> Filtering skills, Good Human filter, Good filter tool (FriendFeed). - Thierry R. Andriamirado from email

Thierry: thanks I was looking for that indeed! Have changed my settings to see how e-mail works out there but I thought maybe there would be an easier way... - Patrick Mackaaij

hey it was great to finally personally meeting you and hung out at the diner ; my weblog about the evening now at http://ff.im/45HR3 plus infos about WE LIVE IN PUBLIC premiering now in L.A. and my new video "PERU" @ http://www.youtube.com/watch... ; all the best for the conference today and building43 ; - ewing2001akaNicomedy2010

Another FF question: I was under the assumption FF would merge duplicate imports so that conversations like these would remain in one place. If I do a search on a tending topic of today this does not seem to be the case: http://friendfeed.com/search... - Patrick Mackaaij

Patrick, the imports may be duplicate URLs or pictures or whatever, but the conversation around them could be different. I see this as a good thing, and it show me two things. (1) it is an intersection of the different groups and types of people that I subscribe to. (2) it can be different nationalities in different timezones. Ie, of a more global interest. Bothe are good pieces of data for me. - Andy Bold from email

@Brom, yes. but there is only so much information one can absorb at a time. 100.000 twitters and 25 FFs? Even half of it is too much for a normal person to take in that fast. Robert MUST be a robot O_O - stefan

@Andy: I'd rather not see any duplicate URL's and have the conversation take place in one thread. Google Translate can solve the language problem. But my question at the moment was what the current status is. I see it's already discussed here: http://friendfeed.com/susanbe... - Patrick Mackaaij

Patrick, I see what you mean now. Nice link - thanks! - Andy Bold from email

how do I follow thousands of people without clicking follow over and over - Kyle Weller

Kyle: Use friendfeed and click "subscribe" - Garin Kilpatrick

Kyle: its still required to click subscribe for each user, but those clicks are well spent, and FF also will show posts from friends-of-friends. another good option is to join some groups for subjects that interest you - Mike Chelen