Facebook seems to produce a kind of existential dread in news organizations and journalists, since it plays an increasingly large role in whether anyone sees their content. That shouldn’t keep them from using it, but they need to keep in mind that it is just a tool
The news is no longer contained in an object we can hold, but flows around us through a variety of apps and services, and the design or algorithmic choices those platforms make can affect how we see the world around us
The suggestion that Twitter might apply Facebook-style algorithmic filtering to its timelines — something executives have said they are considering — seemed to strike many users as the worst thing that could happen to the service
News-filtering service Prismatic has just launched a new “friend following” feature. Although this may look like a social-networking copycat move, founder Brad Cross says it is all about increasing the amount of data the service has about its users so that it can make relevant recommendations.
The British government is considering once again whether to apply mandatory filters to block all adult content on the internet. But what’s the point of campaigning for a technological solution when the technology itself doesn’t work properly?
Mounting evidence suggests Europe’s mobile operators are becoming increasingly censorious, thanks to haphazard adult content filters that are applied to millions of users. The result? De facto, unregulated censorship that screens out thousands of legitimate websites, including GigaOM.
Surrounded by an overwhelming amount of digital content, many people are looking for something that can fill the role of a digital newspaper — filtering and highlighting interesting content. Among the many startups trying to solve this problem is a San Francisco outfit called Prismatic.
Bottlenose, a new web-based service that launched Tuesday and was co-founded by serial entrepreneur Nova Spivack, joins a growing number of apps and services aimed at filtering the noise out of our social-media streams. But does Bottlenose have what it takes to do the job?
Blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick is leaving his job at Read/Write Web to start a company called Plexus Engine, which he says will offer data-filtering tools he has used as a tech journalist. Kirkpatrick joins a growing group of bloggers who have left to join the startup world.
Facebook has launched a new “personal newspaper”-style news feed, while both Digg and Klout are using their internal ranking systems to try and create topic pages. But will any of these solve the growing problem of information overload, or will they just add to the noise?
