SheGeeks

I’m currently listening to Louis Gray, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Gabe Rivera of Techmeme, Melanie Baker (AideRSS), Micah Baldwin (Lijit). They’re all a part of the Beyond Content Aggregation – Finding the Best Content Panel. One of the key things I hope to hear them speak a little more on is filtering and content aggregation. After all, aggregation all of the content available usually results in information overload. In doing so, everyone has various filtering techniques.

Finding Personal Versus Popular Content

While Louis and Robert Scoble may be human filters, services like PostRank and AideRSS are all about helping you get the best content within all the “noise of information”.  However, my problem with said services is that their filtering mechanisms are based on popularity and not necessarily the best personal content.

For personal content aggregation, the aforementioned tools fail me. I don’t want to know what’s the most popular, Techmeme does that for me already. I want to know what’s relevant to me. We need more “relevant filtering services”. Popularity is played out. It’s old and quite frankly, it’s annoying to some extent. Screw popularity. I’ll take relevancy any day!

Q&A

My question to you is: How are you finding the best relevant content? What tools are you using? What manual techniques do you integrate into your search for finding the best content that’s also relevant to you?

Popularity: 17% [?]

Last night, Wayne Sutton and I did a livestream Q&A via Yahoo! Live. Originally, we intended to do it via ustream.tv, however Wayne was have a few technical difficulties with the service only minutes before we were to go live. So, we made a switch to Yahoo! Live.

The conversation with Wayne was great, and initially so was the conversation with our supporters and some of our participants. However, as time wore on, anonymous users started to walk in and spew derogatory remarks all over the place. Louis Gray even caught a couple of screenshots of some of the comments. While it made it much harder for us to answer any questions our real audience might have had, Wayne just encouraged me to ignore them and try to stay focused on the conversation.

Why This Wasn’t Hard For Me

I grew up in an impoverished neighborhood and I’ve seen racism and discrimination in many forms. I’m black, a female, and also a lesbian. That’s 3 ways to discriminate against me and I’ve experienced all three forms before I hit high school and 2 of them before I hit middle school. I’ve seen family members and friends harassed and killed by racist cops in my neighborhood. What happened in the chatroom is better than most of what I’ve experienced.
    

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

A couple of hours after the livestream, Louis Gray and Cyndy Aleo-Carreira posted their thoughts on the situation and profusely apologized to both Wayne and I for having to endure that type of…hatred? Activity? I really don’t know what to call it. However I wish they wouldn’t apologize. I completely understand why they are apologizing and I’m honored and humbled by it. However, they weren’t the ones that caused this situation to happen.

Cyndy seems to feel guilty for not speaking up previously, however it’s not Cyndy’s duty to speak up. It’s nice, yes. However for me, it’s not necessary. You all came to the show, you sat through it with us till the very end and said numerous words of encouragement that I expressed my gratitude for in this video on Seesmic. That’s all I need. You shouldn’t apologize for the behavior of other people because they don’t reflect upon how I view you.

The Power Of Friends

Those people in the chatroom were more annoying than anything because it prevented you all from conversing with Wayne and I. However, they didn’t personally affect me. I really appreciate you all speaking out. I appreciate the support and knowing that you were more disgusted than I was. I guess I’m used to it and I’ve seen much worse in my life. Honestly, I was surprised to see your posts because I had no intentions of making a similar posting. Why? It’s just not a new phenomenon for me.

However, it’s friends and peers like you two that make everything worth it at the end of the day. Your posts have really touched me and I just wanted to say not to worry about how I feel about it personally. I have people like you two standing behind me and that’s more powerful than any word that was stated in that chatroom. The words of my peers and friends will forever ring louder in my mind than any derogatory comment.

Once again, I appreciate the support I truly do. However, I hope you two never apologize to me for someone else’s actions because they don’t reflect upon you for one second.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Dear Scoble,

Recently, I’ve been feeling like you’re taking my big brother Louis Gray away from me. Though he hasn’t told me that you guys have been hanging out, after reading your posts, I’m sure that’s the case.

He doesn’t come over to play on Twitter with me and he doesn’t stop by my blog before leaving the house anymore. I’m sure it’s all because of you. His friends leave comments and send me DM’s on Twitter asking me, "Where’s Louis?". Someone told me that they saw him with you at Friendfeed . You know, just because you’re cool and popular doesn’t mean you should take advantage of that and steal my big brother from me. Friendfeed used to be our hangout! *tear*

I’ve been wondering why he doesn’t take me along with him to Friendfeed anymore. Now I know why. Everytime you mention Friendfeed, you’re mentioning Louis too! I think the answer’s pretty obvious. Thanks for rubbing it in my face.

What are you doing to him, Scoble? Is it another web 2.0 service? An aggregator? I know….you have a super-duper all in one RSS/Lifestream/Aggregator! I have plenty of those in my bookmarks just to let you know! You’re not the only one with secret weapons around here!

I should note that I am thinking of a plan to get take him back. I’m not quite sure how, but I’m working on it. So, you better watch out Scoble!

Sulking,

Corvida

P.S. You didn’t even link to Louis in your post that you wrote FOR him. :P

Popularity: 6% [?]