Can you imagine a world where we only received the information that is relevant to us? A world without time-consuming screening, where we only got the news - and all of the news - that we really care about?

Why don’t we have this world today?

The easiest answer is that the current filtering techniques aren’t advanced enough, and more work needs to be done to improve them. However, in this article I would like to argue that we should not only try to fix the receiving end, but the sending one as well.

Today, no matter what “information stream” we subscribe to; be it newsletters, RSS Feeds, newspapers, TV etc., most of the time we will also receive a lot of irrelevant information. Just think about the newsletters or RSS Feeds to which you currently subscribe. While they do contain interesting information from time to time, they also contain a lot of information you don’t need to know, correct?

The reason for this is, I believe, a structural one. For all “streams” today, once the connection between sender and receiver is established (e.g. subscription to a newsletter) the sender can send us as much information as he or she wants, until we cannot stand it any longer and unsubscribe (or switch channels). There is no direct “control” over the sender to only send the important information, beyond the “threat” that his or her subscribers may jump overboard.

What may initially sound as a benefit to senders actually turns out to be a disadvantage for them as well, because the subscribers are increasingly reluctant to subscribe due to the fear of information overload and senders don’t get as many people to subscribe as they could.

For example: Let’s say you come across a preview site of a new Web 2.0 service that offers to inform you when the service has been launched. How should the webmaster of the site offer to inform you? The most common methods are email alerts/newsletters and RSS Feeds. However, they each have disadvantages from a subscribers’ perspective, leading to fewer subscriptions:  

The idea put forward in this article is to introduce “limited sending rights” for senders, whereby the sender defines a maximum number of messages he can send. That way subscribers know that the sender will not “use up” his sending rights for sending irrelevant information.

For instance, in the above example the webmaster could setup a feed (let’s call it “Private Feed”) on a neutral platform that allows only one message to get sent in total (with a message like “Site has now launched!”), after which the Feed gets automatically deleted.This solution has several advantages from a subscriber’s perspective:  
There is an incentive for the sender, as well, he’ll retain more of his subscribers if they are only getting the information they want. More subscribers means a larger informed market, which is usually the sender’s main goal. Basically, it’s a tool for the “good” senders to demonstrate convincingly that they will only send what they promise to.

The case above was only an example. Limitation of sending rights can be useful every time the sender can make a rough estimate on how many messages will need to be sent. For example, to most people the following Private Feeds would add value, without risking information overload:

• An alert if a favourite singer/ comedian/ band etc. publishes new touring dates (max. 4 messages/ year)
• An alert if a favourite author publishes a new book (max. 4 messages/ year)
• A message to inform that a lottery is accepting new applications, e.g. US Greencard lottery, Worldcup football tickets etc. (max. 2 messages/ year)
• An alert that the sports club/ fitness studio etc. is closed this week (max. 1 message/ week)
• A short reminder for daylight savings time (max. 2 messages/ year)
• Joke of the week (max. 1 message/ week)
• A reminder for valentines day (max. 1 message/ year)
• A reminder for April 1st fools day (max. 1 message/ year)
• A reminder for full moon (max. 13 messages/ year)
• Etc.

The vision is that as users browse the net, they constantly subscribe to a wide range of limited “Private Feeds” (with one click) without any inhibitions, thereby ensuring that they will not miss out on any important stuff and without risking spam or information overload.

This, in a nutshell, is the idea of the “limited sending rights”-feature, which has been implemented on the recently launched Nextfeeds.com platform.

The next posts will deal with other features on NextFeeds.com that also aim to reduce information overload, however in slightly different ways.

So: what do you think about this approach? Does this make any sense? Your comments are very welcome.

—
1) RSS is designed to deliver messages from publishers to subscribers on a frequent basis and not suitable for alerts and notifications which typically do not occur very often. For example, when subscribing to an RSS Feed on a personalized news page (e.g. iGoogle), the user expects an ongoing delivery of new messages as otherwise he would be looking at the same messages over and over again.

Also, RSS implies a higher risk that single messages do not get read as new messages push out old ones (in the example of the personalized news pages like iGoogle). However, especially for alerts it is important that they get read. A message from an email, however, is sitting in the subscribers inboxes until it is deleted.