Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise on the Net:

Following the feeds of people you like and admire, these companies say, allows the serendipitous discovery of needles in the information haystack. “Friends are likely to have some similar interests and tastes. Just the fact that your friends find it interesting should make it more interesting to you,” said Paul Buchheit, one of FriendFeed’s four founders, all of them former Google engineers.

Last week, for example, Mr. Buchheit’s followers on FriendFeed were treated to what he himself had discovered and found valuable online: links to interviews with the investor Peter Thiel in Reason magazine and the Google co-founder Larry Page in Fortune, an article about Justice Antonin Scalia’s views on torture on a political Web site, and a YouTube video of nine kittens moving their heads in rhythm to a song, among other Internet ephemera.

I must admit to a double-take when I read “links to interviews with the investor Peter Thiel in Reason magazine and the Google co-founder Larry Page in Fortune” — since I just cited each of those (here and here).

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