File this one away with my series of posts focused on Information Overload…

One major gripe I’ve had with Twitter for some time now (and I know I’m not alone here) is the inability to group the people you follow into certain categories. Let me explain.  Currently I’m following (receiving updates from) upwards of 600 people on Twitter.   It can be assumed that they are all worth listening to from time to time – otherwise I wouldn’t have clicked “follow” in the first place.  But the experience of watching a big newsfeed tick by with the updates from all these people is a little daunting, and clearly inefficient.  How can I focus with all this noise?

Right now, some of my main interests are startups, photography, Milwaukee (”represent”), and business intelligence.  Sometimes (almost all the time actually) I’d prefer to read about only one of these subjects, not all of them at a time.  For example, if I’m in a creative mood, I could be eager to see what people are saying about photography or design.  Now, I could do a twitter search for “photography”.  While this might return some decent results, it just shows me a list of recent tweets mentioning “photography”.  This completely negates the time I’ve put into finding people who actually know what they’re talking about.  I’d much rather just see the recent updates from all the people who I consider experts.  And now I can – using the Tweetie iPhone app, with the process described below. [note: This works just as well with Twhirl for the desktop if you don't have an iPhone]

Tweetie is like many iPhone Twitter applications that allow you to see the recent updates from the people you follow.  What sets it apart is that Tweetie allows you to use many different Twitter accounts.

Here’s how it works:
1. Download Tweetie (it’s $3, but worth it)

2. Make a list of topics you’re into.
Maybe include on the list some people on Twitter who clearly know what they’re talking about when it comes to that topic.

3.  Create a new Twitter account for each topic
(in this example, i’ve appended “a_” to the name.  It will help my list of accounts sort nicely alphabetically later)

4. Log into the account created for a topic, and follow the people who say interesting things about that topic. For example, with the account I created for Photography, I followed @simonmcconico, @jakedavidrohde, @RachelK, @photocampmke as a good start.

5. Add your real account, and your “topic accounts” to Tweetie

Now you’re all set!  In my example, I can pop into the Photography account to see what the photography tweeps are talking about…

Or if I want to see what’s going on in Milwaukee, it’s as easy as checking the Milwaukee account…

One critical feature of Tweetie is the ability to reply with any of your accounts.  So If I’m viewing all the Milwaukee updates, I can still reply as @blakesamic.

Just another battle won in the war against Information overload.  Let me know what you think in the comments.

In this day in age, those of us that have chosen to dive head first into the social web are bombarded with communication from every angle. Information overload is a very real thing, and I believe the need for software to help us filter and prioritize this information will grow exponentially in the coming years.

So I have an idea, or the early stages of an idea, and I wanted to get it out there for discussion. Let’s start at the beginning, where all solutions should start – with the problem.

The Problem:
* Most people are now a part of one or more social networks and the communication we recieve daily is no longer limited to email and phone calls. To build networks that help us professionally, many of us are ‘loosely’ connected to people that we hardly know (especially on Twitter). There is a hope that these relationships will grow into more meaningful, personal contacts.  Due to all of these relationships, there is a proliferation of communication channels. It can be easy to let the connections that are truly the most important (your core network) fall by the wayside when we’re preoccupied with everything else.

The Solution:
To simplify our lives, I believe there is a need for an application that aggregates all of the communication from the people that matter most in one spot – while excluding the rest. Let me explain.

If you consider all of your digital communication channels, only a subset of them are actually directed at you. For example, if you follow a friend on Twitter (or follow their Facebook status updates, etc.) you are getting lots of information that may be interesting, but isn’t directed at you. Out of all the messages directed at you, only a portion of them are from people in your core network.

So the first problem this application should solve is to filter out everything that A. isn’t directed at you, and B. isn’t from someone in your core network.

When I think about all of the messages that meet these criteria, it makes sense to categorize them into two buckets:
1. Active Communication – These are messages that reasonably expect a prompt response. Instant messages (Google Chat, AIM, Skype IM, Facebook chat, etc.), text messages, and voice calls (Skype, phone) fall into this category.
2. Latent Communication – These are messages that don’t typically require a response right away. Most people aren’t offended if you wait a day or two to answer an email or a Facebook message for example.

I’m thinking the user interface for this would look similar to TweetDeck, with one column for the ‘active’ channels, and one for the ‘latent’ channels.  You should be able to sort by contact (showing all messages from them in one spot, no matter how they were sent) or by chronological order.

This app shouldn’t require anyone in your core network to join. It’s a tool for you. The fact that you’re using it, should be transparent. That brings me to the next feature. When you respond to messages in this tool, the responses should go out through the same channel the initial messages came in. For example, if you’re replying to a text message using this app, your friend will receive a text message. If you’re replying to an email using the app, your friend will receive an email. So it shouldn’t matter how the messages are coming in.

For any of this to work, the user will be required to define their ‘core network’ (most likely family and very close friends). I think this ‘core network’ should be limited to about 20 people. Why you ask? Because the value of the app will never be realized if the user just dumps all their contacts in there. Remember, the idea is seperate out the conversations that matter most – to prevent other things from taking up more of your time than they should. This area is a little fuzzy, however, since people generally get uncomfortable (understandably) when they are asked to ‘rank’ their friends. So maybe the user will only be required to specify the top 20 contacts, without ranking them 1-20.  And maybe the user wouldn’t have to define the list at all.  It could possibly be suggested to them based on who they interact with most in email (think Xobni).  That could at least get them started with a list they could modify.

A few other features that I think would fit well here:
* Birthday reminders for the core network
* Reports showing you how long it’s been since you’ve connected with each person in the network

You might be saying to yourself, this sounds like FriendFeed.  Although FriendFeed is a great idea, I don’t think it solves this problem.  With FriendFeed you get to see all of your friends’ activities across social networks in one place – but you’re still getting all that noise and it’s not focused on the communication directed at you.  And this isn’t Xobni either.  Althought Xobni is another great service, it doesn’t take into account all the communication happening outside of email.

Well that’s the start of the idea.  I wanted to get it out there.  If anyone would like to discuss this in greater detail and throw some more ideas up on the wall, leave a comment here.  Or, of course, you could contact me via one of my many social networks ;-)

Everyday we’re getting slammed with information from every angle, so I’m always looking for better, more efficient ways to make sense of it all. Last week I found myself deleting dozens of email alerts and notifications from Facebook, Twitter, and various banks.  While this information is arguably important, I’ve decided that it’s clogging up my inbox and making me slower to respond to emails from friends and family.  I’ve devised a scheme to solve this problem.

Since I’m increasingly mobile, like a lot of people, I chose to use the iPhone as the centerpiece of my “Communication Segmentation” plan (note: term originally coined by Tad Johnson).  iPhone makes it extremely easy to add new Gmail accounts to your email application, so I decided to make multiple Gmail accounts – one for each of these communication types.  I registered all five accounts in one day, so it would appear that Google doesn’t care if you do this.

1. Personal Gmail: I get all my regular email here from friends and family.  I tend to filter out any kind of advertising, etc. and send those emails directly to the archives.

2. ActionsTalk Gmail: I have a few things routed here now.  Since I set up a Twitter account for ActionsTalk (my startup spotlight website), I’ve got all the alerts for that account going here.  Any new comment alert coming from the site (ActionsTalk.com), and emails from sponsors or startups are also sent here.  Lastly, I used search.twitter.com to set up an RSS feed for any time someone mentions “@ActionsTalk” on Twitter.  I pump that RSS feed through xFruits using their RSS to Email generator and voila… I get an email any time we’re mentioned.

3.  Twitter Gmail: I do all the same stuff with this email account that I did with #2, but this time I have all the alerts for my personal Twitter account fed in.

4.  Facebook Gmail: I’ve got all my alerts from Facebook here like new friend requests, notifications of wall posts, photo tags, etc.

5.  Finance Gmail: I now have all my email from any of my bank accounts sent to this email address.  This includes bill pay reminders, spending threshold alerts, etc.

Bottom line: This system took about 30 minutes to set up.  After about a week of using it, I can say that it has made me much better at reading and responding to emails.  I can clearly see how many of each type I have, and I can deal with them at my leisure. Give it a shot, and let me know what you think in the comments.