Is Filtering the Next Step for Social Media?

As you know I'm a big fan of the ReadWriteWeb blog. They have a wonderful writers panel and cram out insightful posts regularly.

Not too long ago a post was written about the next step in social media. It is titled: 'Why Filtering is the Next Step for Social Media'. The beginning of the post was hard to follow, to be honest. But I like the line of thought and agree with the last section:

Filters are rapidly becoming a pertinent issue for developers of social media services. As a result, social aggregation platforms are in the perfect position to lead the pack. While this is no easy task and one that cannot be solved in its entirety, it would help resolve another issue social media users are facing: courtesy.

Instead of being able to freely add whatever service you wish, some users like myself are taking into account what others may consider noise on certain services as a courtesy to members. In essence, you are becoming our own filter. You may refrain from important other services for fear of being labeled as "noisy". With better filtering options, users can use these services to their fullest extent without becoming a nuisance to others or missing the benefits of aggregating all of their accounts.

As one commenter (nr. 7) wrote: filtering is not new, it's old. That's true. But now we need more user-friendly and social filtering. And that's pretty new.