What About Non-New Content?

One person we always try and learn from is Noah Brier, co-founder of Percolate and leading thinker surrounding many web innovations. Noah recently highlighted a moment from a News.me Q & A session with Evan Williams, co-founder of Twitter:

Q: Is anything missing from your news consumption pattern now or in the tools/sites that you use? Anything you wish you had?

A: One thing that I find missing is discovery of non-new content. The web is completely oriented around new-thing-on-top. Our brains are also wired to get a rush from novelty. But most “news” we read really doesn’t matter. And a much smaller percentage of the information I actually care about or would find useful was produced in the last few hours than my reading patterns reflect.

There have been phenomenal posts over the years that we don’t want to forget about:

Martin Weigel’s Surviving and Prospering in the Participation Paradox

David Hieatt’s Love + Purpose

The idea of True Grit from the Heath brothers

Simon Sinek’s How Great Leaders Inspire Action

Danah Boyd’s Streams of Content, Limited Attention

Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans.

And so on.

We just can’t help but think there must be a cool way to re-deliver such content so as to not forget about them.

New content will always grab the headlines. But as a culture we do a pretty good job in literature not forgetting about The Great Gatsby and To Kill A Mockingbird. How do we do the same on the web?