Conventional wisdom would have it that more information is better. But the biological and evolutional evidence supports the notion of “less is more” — that higher forms of biological intelligence have developed sensory systems that do more and more to *filter out* information.

One of the things that discriminates your human nervous system from that of, say, a house fly is not that you can take in more data. Rather, what distinguishes you are the sensory inputs your biological systems leave out, or summarize.

I think there are parallels here to information sites. A house fly can pass all that data through. The evolutionary leap of the human brain is to filter out the useless clutter and focus on what’s important and useful. Sites like Yelp are, as of today, the Web’s house flies.

Plenty of on-line forums have experienced meteoric growth with this model, but at some point it experiences major-league growing pains. Yelp is past that point. They’re amassing a huge amount of data, but they really need to condense it. As one person put it…

“if yelp survives/succeeds, it will be because they found a way to reduce the noise.”

It’s one thing to procure a herd of cattle…..keeping them from stampeding is another matter.