I quite regularly profess to not use social media because it is a massive waste of time. However it has been recently pointed out to me that reading and posting in this space consitutes "social media". Please tell me it isn't true cos at least 20% of what appears here is not a waste of time. Just haven' t figured out how ro pre-judge which 20% of posts should be read.

It's ALL social media...heh

There's a story I read many years ago about a development agency that went into an African village and put running water in all the homes. The idea was simple: replace the well water with clean water from a managed source and you'd cut down on disease. Within a week however, the women were back at the community well. When asked about this they said they liked clean water, but without the communal aspect of a well they had no idea what was going on around them. In the end they removed the pipes, put the filtered water system adjacent to the old well, and the problem was solved.

This story serves to illustrate that humans are social animals that need the presence of others, not just to exchange information, but to reinforce a sense of community and personal identity. In that sense, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, even our little 300 club are like that well.

If you think about Twitter, it's a perfect metaphor. I have a back yard full of birds that are tweeting constantly. Outside of mating season, and other than the occasional alarm or food alert, I'm convinced it means nothing more than "hey I'm here!" and "yeah, me too!"

There's really no getting around it. You'll find the same phenomena on the best sites - Naked Capitalism, Zero Hedge, The Oil Drum, etc. People cluster together around common interests, whether it's gold stocks, the New World Order, or what to wear on Friday night. Chances are they don't really have much to add to the conversation. They're just checking in.

The way around the 20% problem (signal to noise ratio in engineering terms) is to consider the source and apply the appropriate filters, bearing in mind that we all add to the noise at one time or another - just that it's easier to see it in others than in ourselves.

Another way to look at it is Context. If 20% of what you read here is useful to an investor, chances are the same ratio applies to a teenage girl on Facebook. She's also getting 20% useful information, relative to her needs.

ebear