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There’s an old adage that one death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic. One masterpiece on the wall is a study, but a wall full of masterpieces is expensive wallpaper. One diamond is a beauty, but a table full of diamonds obscures the brightness of any one. We lose the ability to discern effectively when we’re swamped.

As it is with life, so it is with new media. When you share a link, it’s useful, worth looking at, worth paying attention to. When you share 129 of them? It’s just so much more noise, even if every one of them is a diamond.

What we value in the information overload age isn’t more information but curation, selection, distillation.

There’s a reason why I do #the5 – it forces me to take a careful look at everything that’s of value in front of me and pick the 5 things among them that are the most valuable. You don’t need #the25 or #the450, and chances are you wouldn’t read it anyway. I wouldn’t.

If you want to be known for something in social media, be known as someone who has the good stuff and who packages it up neatly. You’ll make more short lists of people to be followed than someone just vomiting every shiny object that crosses their desk.


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