The Funnel Effect

Have you noticed how everything, these days is about getting data from as many places into one central location? Look at FriendFeed, look at uberVU, and the likes of Apture. Even Google Reader and other RSS readers do the same. Different methods, same idea. Get data from many places into one space, for you to happily engorge. I call this the Funnel Effect.

These are all agregators, but there are other examples out there. There are companies like smartHOTEL, that do something amazing, yet not that complicated. They spare hotels the hustle of crawling around 10 different websites belonging to 10 different tour operators and updating their prices everywhere. Instead, they use their system an voila! The idea is yet so simple the implementation so hard. And the benefits so great.

But if we keep stuffing more things in the funnel, won’t we get to the point when it will mutate into an waterfall?

There is probably a limit to the human capabilities, out there, that will force us to shape these tools into something we can digest. An by the way, isn’t user usability and good design an good example of how we must shape our tools to fit our abilities, be those mental or physical?

Prove me wrong, please.