I recently stumbled upon an article in the NYtimes stating that according to Basex, a business research firm, the costs of information overload will amount to $650 billion in 2008 for US companies alone, making it one of the “main problems of the year 2008”. That’s quite a bold statement, considering the number of problems out there.

However, they might be right. Thinking about the time I spend browsing through the information flood to pick out the news that are relevant, and also the dullness that comes with it when doing it, makes me realize that it is indeed one of the major challenges I am facing every day. And it cannot be skipped or left out as it is simply required to stay up-to-date on the important news, both in private life and at work. 

Some research on the subject revealed that, not surprisingly, information overload is far from new: with more than 1,300,000 hits in google, the term “information overload” seems to have become a victim of the problem itself addresses.

However, surprisingly, there do not seem to be many news sites out there that deal with IO trends on a regular basis in a focused but still comprehensive way. Therefore this blog is launched, its aim being to fill the gap and to provide the latest trends and ideas on how to meet the challenge of information overload.

This blog will also be used to announce important updates on NextFeeds.com, a new internet application (to be launched soon) that will try out some new ideas on how to tackle information overload. More information about it in the following posts.

In order to serve as an up-to-date platform for IO trends, this blog also depends on readers contribution. If you know of any relevant information (sites that deal with information overload, new technologies etc.) please comment on this post or send us an email (info at managingio.com). It’s planned to publish all relevant sources in one of the next posts.