We’ve been keeping ourselves busy these days amassing our many thousands of online connections: facebook friends, twitter feeds, linked-in colleagues, news feeds, blogs, celebrities, magazines, favorite brands, et al.
Where does it all end?
How many people, places, things can we possibly keep up with at any given time?
Fortunately humans are equipped with a little something called selective hearing, which is our natural defense against over stimulation and the inevitable insanity that follows. But as of late, our over-connected world has caused a bit of rapid human evolution. It has lead to a highly-developed filtering system that allows us to instantly bypass comments, communications and blurbs from those less interesting to us. Proof is in your uncanny ability to fly through hundreds of facebook posts in seconds, always seeming to find the interesting nuggets and subconsciously breezing by the inane comments from friends you know are simply inane.
But as of yet, technology has had surprisingly little to add to this filtering system. Today it simply acts as a gatherer. Tomorrow it needs to act as hunter.
Think of it this way, much of the information we gather can be extremely valuable in certain contexts, even the mundane stuff.
When you’re planning a trip with a group of friends, everyones commentary is important at that particular instant. When you’re going shopping, all the brand information, sales, promotions, comparisons are extremely valuable.
Marketers more than anyone need to recognize this. As personal networks grow, being selected as part of a consumer’s vast network of connections may be nothing more than facebook wallpaper. But in the right context, those connections are extremely useful and greatly desired.
Technology needs to take control, bucketing all of our varied connections into useful groups and more importantly, bringing relevant connections to the forefront precisely when and where they are most useful for us.
As much as we’d like to think otherwise, these networks can’t grow forever. There is a tipping point. Marketers should take some responsibility here. Maybe even become part of the solution. Either that or there will be a cataclysmic house cleaning in our future.
