In the early days of the web, portals like Yahoo were cluttered with “stuff”. Yahoo still seems cluttered. And maybe that’s okay for some users but when Google stepped in with a compelling search algorithm AND a nice clean interface, people noticed.

On Yahoo, there was a lot of noise. On Google, there was a lot of signal.

That’s started to change as Google AdWords dominate with affiliate marketing and MLM offers. Google search is still heavy signal, but it’s getting cluttered by some noise.

Later, Myspace became insanely popular as people started getting into social networking. But Myspace pages became cluttered and directionless, and extremely ugly. Facebook stepped in with a much cleaner and highly structured system to help people make connections.

On Myspace, there was a lot of noise. On Facebook, there was a lot of signal.

That’s started to change as Facebook apps dominate our “news streams” when they report on how a friend did during a recent game of Mafia wars. Fortunately, these can be turned off but there are so many!

Twitter broke through with a lot of signal, especially in the very beginning. But now, there is a lot of noise as scammers and spammers follow like crazy. It takes some work to clean up the clutter but you can reduce the noise.

There are two things I want to talk about relating to signal versus noise.

First, if you create any kind of content, how much signal and how much noise are you creating of each? Signal is the compelling engagement that you might have with a prospect or client. Noise is the boilerplate email or tweet you use to promote your products. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for promotional content. However, in the wrong places it can contribute to the noise. If you are advertising on Google, if you are engaging your prospects and customers on Facebook, and if you are tweeting regularly on Twitter, make a very thorough check of your own signal to noise ratio. And, don’t just limit it to Google, Facebook, and Twitter. Those are the examples I’ve used here. There are lots of other places where your online marketing can be signal or can be noise. It’s up to you.

Second, if you are exploring new ways of engaging your customers, or even if you’re a company innovating a new way to communicate, take note: The Googles, the Facebooks, and the Twitters of the internet got their foothold because they addressed the signal versus noise issue. They found a way to eliminate the noise and help people find the signal.

The more connected the web makes our world, the more we’ll have to sort through this stuff.

photo credit: infomatique