There is a lot of information out there and it’s accessible anywhere. I remember the first time I settled an argument over a beer by Googling on my Blackberry (I won the argument by the way, Tony Hawk is taller than 6 feet). Marketers talk about how media fragmentation and information overload make it hard to reach consumers. But is it?

Clay Shirky once said about, “It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure.”

Google and Bing are fixing this problem through search. By finding the intent behind somebody’s search, they create better filters to present relevant results. They personalize results based on your geographic location, your search history, your social graph and more. Google CEO Eric Smith (in)famously said:

<div class=”quote”>With your permission, you give us more information about you, about your friends, and we can improve the quality of our searches. We don’t need you to type at all. We know where you are. We know where you’ve been. We can more or less know what you’re thinking about.</div>

What can we learn from this? A lot.

A good filter separates relevant from irrelevant information. And relevancy is personal.