Feedonomics

After the pointer from Jeff Jarvis, I’ve been reading back through the archives of blogger Leisa Reichart, and I found this post in which she begs designers and users of social networks to turn down the noise. She seems to have gone through a transformation when it comes to noise. Here is what she was asking for a year ago:

If you’re designing a social application at the moment, think about how you can be quiet. This is just one of a million pleas from socially networked people everywhere who are going to great efforts to manage the noise that their networked applications are generating at times when they really need some quiet time to focus.

Leisa’s shift to embracing noise a year later is an interesting effect of continued use of Twitter.

The idea of noise as a positive aspect of Twitter is gaining traction. Jeff Jarvis quotes blogger Leisa Reichelt on the benefits of noise:

“Isn’t this all just annoying noise?” Reichelt asks and answers: “There are a lot of us, though, who find great value in this ongoing noise. It helps us get to know people who would otherwise be just acquaintances. It makes us feel closer to people we care for but in whose lives we’re not able to participate as closely as we’d like. Knowing these details creates intimacy.”

When I took a journalism course at the Shorenstein Center a few years ago, professional news people in the class were still speaking dismissively of bloggers. I wonder how long it will take before reporters are assigned to Twitter as their beat?