TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Ben Brooks:

My Twitter feed is anything BUT a curation of anything I want to read. What links people post on Twitter aren’t always read by me and are certainly not liked by me universally — same with every other Twitter user, we tend to follow more people than we actually care to follow. That’s where these apps fail for me every time.

Shawn’s right, I do want to see what my friends are reading — more importantly I want to see what they are reading AND liking. That’s why linked lists are important to me and that’s why Instapaper’s ‘Like’ sharing is so damned sweet.

I couldn’t agree more. Even if my taste in articles lined up precisely with the people I follow on Twitter, people don’t always link to articles they enjoyed reading—in many cases, they’re news event articles, or to something random that they enjoyed but doesn’t particularly have a lot of value.

Instapaper, though, has three filters: first, I can follow only the users on Instapaper that I know have similar taste in reading; second, they added the article to their Instapaper queue, which people tend not to do unless it’s of some value; and they certainly wouldn’t “like” it if it wasn’t worth reading for some reason.

“Social” news is certainly a trend right now, but I’m not that interested in what my friends are reading. What I’m more interested in is creating a very specific group of people I respect and following what they’ve enjoyed reading, because if they found it worth reading, it’s likely I’ll benefit from it, too. The value isn’t in seeing what my friends are reading. The value is in finding more things worth reading.