About two years ago, I wrote about Amplification and the changing role of media and argued that “think picking things to amplify is also important. Back in the day, news people made choice by deciding which stories to write. Today, we have to adopt a similar rigor about what we choose to share and amplify.”

Fast forward to today — the social web is much bigger: more than 300million people on Twitter. Two billion people on Facebook and over a billion people on Instagram. Every time you share a link, or a piece of news, you are actually telling people to look at it. You are asking them to spend their biggest resource — attention (and time) — on what you are sharing.

By sharing stuff which is subpar, you are essentially wasting someone’s time. That in the long run isn’t a good idea, especially if you want people to follow you closely and pay attention. One of the worst things to do is retweeting something without as much as reading a piece and endorsing it for the sake of retweets. It is the ultimate disregard for those who choose to follow what you have to say.

Feature photo courtesy of Unsplash