Money talks. Or, in this case it doesn’t.

Have you noticed that the vast majority of published ideas will not increase your business or personal revenue? If someone has a truly great idea for increasing earnings or creating new revenue  out of thin air, they will implement or trade it themselves and will never share.

At the point a great (tech sector) business concept is shared, it enters the highly efficient ideas market that is the Tech Echo Chamber (HN, Reddit, Slashdot, TC, etc..)  – which efficiently propagates it out to the rest of the world’s population of innovators. At this point the idea is undifferentiated, rapidly being implemented by all, and you’re in a price or other kind of efficiency war.

This, combined with the truism that it’s not a bad idea to completely ignore your competitors and focus on your customers, makes it a pretty darn good idea to avoid spending too much time on tech publications and social media outlets. You will learn nothing new and what you will learn loses much of its value the moment it’s published. The temptation to imitate will probably harm your business as you’re bounced along in the current of swarming incompetents.

The main (possibly only) thing I use blogs and social media reporting on tech news for is to keep track of landscape changes. Changes in the economics of a sector or changes in technology. Either of these almost always signal the start of a firestorm of innovation.

Focus on your customers, find the truly brilliant ideas that solve customer problems and beware of sharing them too early.

Footnote: The concept I’m describing relates to Efficient Market Hypothesis and Information Asymmetry if you’d like to read more.