I mentioned yesterday that the web can be a great platform for communicating and change, but is often misused. I gave an example of such a misuse, a petition that lacked worthy content. Not worthy of your time, which to you is precious. And that's another problem with the web. There's so much of it. How do we filter the signals, the content that you should be consuming, from the noise, the content that isn't worth even looking at?

Searching the web can yield some real finds like topical blogs, forums and e-books. This takes time though, and once we find an interesting source of content, we then need to spend some time validating the content. In my experience I have found that the best content is the content that is referred to you others. Two examples of this are content that is referred to you from others in your network and content from curated newsletters.

From Your Network

Over time I've built up this network of bloggers around me who put great content on their blogs. Michael Wade, Kurt Harden, Curtis McHale andNicholas Bate to name a few. I've been reading their blogs for a long time now, and when I see something interesting on their blogs that I would like to share, I link to it from my own blog.

It also works the other way. When any of these bloggers find something interesting on my blog they pass it on to their readers. This network of blogs is a great source of vetted content that I can be assured will interest me. Building a network like this can take time, but it's worth it in the end.

From Newsletters

I subscribe to a number of newsletters. Some for programming, some for writing and there's plenty of others. Email newsletters were once the crowning glory of the internet but then RSS came along. People found it easier to manage a feed reader than their burgeoning inbox. However newsletters have recently made a comeback.

The great thing about newsletters are that they are curated by someone else. Thought and time has been put into ensuring that the newsletter contains relevant content for its subscribers. And it's for this reason that I subscribe to a fair few newsletters. I don't want to invest time in searching for content when someone else can provide it for me.

These are two of the main ways in which I filter the best content for myself. There are others ways, but these two methods I find yield the best content for me.