There were a few summers in life where I spent hours and hours on Google Reader. Sites that I would once have glanced at in passing I now read every single article their staff put out. As I was browsing reviews of food carts in Baltimore I would wonder,  why am I wasting time with this? I’m going to be honest. A large reason I was reading all of those articles was kill time but the other reasons where that Google Reader must have tapped into some OCD of mine. I had to stay up to date, keeping my head above water in the information flood which was my blog aggregation. I haven’t thought about Google Reader in quite a few years. The latest announcement surprised me, not that the reader was ending but that I still had loyal fan. Who uses aggregating tools anymore? Then I realized that one billions of us. It’s called Facebook.

A few years ago Google Plus tried to create it’s own social network were you could divided up your social groups into circles. Family, high school friends and co-workers would all be separated into different circles. It turns out that very few of us wanted to make the switch. Sure we might have our Grandmother see the same posts as our best-friends but who can take all that time to switch over contacts. Why force people into categorical relationships when Facebook does such a great job of aggregating them all into one long news feed.

I find aggregation tools fascinating because they create a even playing ground which isn’t found in the real world. They place an amateur review of a movie about a piece about international relations by the New York Times. Facebook lets me know what my sister is doing as well as the guy who sat in my high school chem class ten years ago.