I consume, filter and sort a lot of information everyday (this is an understatement) and I don’t even consume as much as some people that I know. If you look at Robert Scoble or Steve Rubel, I pale in comparison.

I’ve written before about the need to build the skill of juggling the flow of information. One thing I have  noticed however is that there are different ways to become a prosumer of information.

I look at the way Robert Scoble and Steve Rubel manage their information. Please note that these are just my observations from watching Robert and Steve and following them online for the past 5 years. They (or you) may disagree with my assessment of their media consumption practices.

Robert Scoble drinks from a fire hose. When he gets on a new service or social network he figures out how to follow as many people as he can.

Robert uses other early adopters and available tools (video on how he uses TweetDeck) to bring information to him but relies on his brain to do most of the filtering knowing that important themes and trends will reoccur.

This approach has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Robert knows that his brain will pick up trends less obvious to most. He’s almost subconsciously seeing patterns. This isn’t perfect or scientific by any means but it has worked well for Robert. This is also a much more time consuming way to approach data consumption although it’s done in the background during *spare cycles*. Some Most people find this too overloading.

Characteristics of Scoble Consumption:

• Multiple sources
  • There is no limit to the number of Sources you use. Wherever you can get the highest level of raw content.
  • To achieve this you will also follow just about anyone sacrificing signal for data.
• Multiple Devices.
  • You have no preference between Mac or PC. You run multiple laptops, mobile mobile devices and whatever’s the newest AIR app.

Steve Rubel on the other hand chooses to rely on tools as a primary filtering tool. His Jedi like mastery of Gmail and GoogleReader is truly awe-inspiring. I’d love to watch over his shoulder one morning as he goes through his morning routine. (Steve needs to at least compile all of his posts into an ebook or something)

Steve uses people as filters as well, keying in on certain influencers who he knows will pass on a much higher signal to noise ratio. Once the tools and people have brought the content to Steve this is when his highly analytical skills to sort through the remaining noise. He’s obviously very good at this given that his position at Edelman is basically to do this and report on important trends. He’s basically Edelman’s lighting rod. (Pretty much the coolest job in the World IMO)

This approach also has it’s own advantages and disadvantages. Taking the time to master the tools and set them up is probably more time intensive initially but I’m assuming pays off in less manual filtering. The other risk is that some of the finer nuances a Scoble like approach may bring could be lost through the initial filtering. Also as tools change so fast in this space the switching cost of moving to a new tool is pretty high, which is why Steve still prefers email as his master dashboard.

Characteristics of Rubel Consumption:

• Multiple sources but heavy influencer filtering
  • You are on FriendFeed, Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc but are in no hurry to follow thousands of people. You rely on select people to provide up front filtering.
• A preference for an integrated OS
  • Whether it’s Mac or PC you live and work on one laptop and one phone. All your tools integrate together seamlessly (Steve’s a Mac BTW)
• You experiment with the latest shiny web app but are slow to integrate it into your system.

Ultimately I think that it’s understanding how your brain works. Neither of these approaches are going to work perfectly for everyone. I think it’s an important part of the juggling process to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t and it does take time.

I think I tend to lean more towards the Scoble approach for consuming media (just not at his level) and more of a Rubel approach for creating content (ie I lean on a lot more tools for creation). My brain does the filtering in the middle but I make up for it in the creation process. I also work to integrate the creation with consumption. This results in a lot of “thinking out loud” blog and Twitter posts but that’s also part of the filtering process for me.

What about you? What tools or tricks do you use to consume and filter the growing amounts of data?