The New View From Object Towers

Scoble on the poverty of attention

As per my earlier post, Robert Scoble has blogged about the same issue.

"The problem is that so much is coming at us that we’re just not doing a good job of understanding it and dealing with it all."

Wealth of information = poverty of attention

As we get bombarded by Facebook alerts, e-mails and RSS feeds, I thought this quote from 1978 Nobel Prize winning scientist Herbert Simon was rather appropriate:

"What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it."

How true is that?

Facebook whales

Apparently, Facebook employees refer to users with over 1000 friends as whales. After 2 months, I'm approaching the 200 mark, which presumably makes me a small porpoise. It's worth considering that it took me nearly 3 years to get that number of contacts on LinkedIn.

Of course, we aren't comparing apples with apples here. My Facebook friends list contains pretty much everybody I know - personal friends, clients, ex-clients, journalists, people I've met virtually through blogging, etc. LinkedIn is purely for work contacts. But there is no doubt at the moment that FB is getting more of my time than LinkedIn. 

I'm curious to know what LinkedIn intends to do to redress the balance.