The Web's future: a $0.22 piece of felt

I was diagnosed with tendinitis in my left thumb three weeks ago.  My doctor fitted me with a stylish black brace that keeps me from moving my thumb.  The wrist brace isn't too bad.  I can still type very well -- almost as fast as usual, since the left thumb doesn't do a whole lot on a keyboard.  But my main annoyance is the Velcro on the brace.

As you can see in these pictures, the manufacturer decided to sew one long strip of Velcro (the scratchy kind, not the soft kind) onto the length of the brace, where the three straps connect.  But the Velcro area is bigger than it needs to be, so there's lots of exposed "scratchy" Velcro to catch onto other things.  I keep getting my hand stuck to my sweaters!  It's already caused minor damage to a couple pieces of my clothing.  So to solve this problem, my wife and I stopped at Wal-Mart to buy a piece of black felt.  $0.22 out the door, tax included -- quite possibly the cheapest Wal-Mart trip ever!  This little add-on to cover up the excess Velcro should keep it from snagging.

As I was reading my friend Nate Riggs' post about the prospects of a Web 2.0 crash, as well as the Seth Godin post he links to about oversaturation, it made me think about how my $0.22 piece of black felt relates to the Web's future:

• Content is like my brace's Velcro.  The right amount is wonderful, but having too much is simply annoying.
  

• Web 2.0 has made everyone publishers.  From Facebook to Twitter to YouTube, an enormous amount of information is being churned out every minute by so many people.  The more content that's added, the harder it becomes to separate the wheat from the chaff.  Having too much Velcro on your brace (too much content to digest) gets your hand stuck to your sweater (paralyzed with too much information).
  
  
• The future of Web 2.0 will come from filtering all this information.  Too overwhelmed with thousands of unread items in their RSS feeds, the next generation of Web visionaries will find a way to filter this information to make it more manageable.  If today's social media is Web 2.0, this filtered subset of information will be Web 2.1.  It will be equivalent to a piece of felt being placed over the excess Velcro on my brace.  The "filters" of Web 2.1 will hide the information that isn't adding value for that particular end user -- just like the felt is covering up the excess Velcro.
  

Social media is here to stay.  It'll evolve, and it might even face some setbacks as people struggle with how to deal with too much information, and as companies like Facebook and Twitter try to put profitable business models in place.  But once the right filters are in place, the trait that made Web 2.0 a success to begin with -- giving everyone the ability to be a publisher -- will sustain it for the long term.