My 3 tips on managing the noise would be:
1. Don’t jump immediately onto the rush to try every new latest shiney tool e.g. such as Google Wave. Let others do all the work, road test and when enough say is worthwhile then pay attention to the noise
2. Use zero inbox (I’m not sure if I can explain how that helps but it does)
3. Work out which voices in your network are the most important opinions to listen to so you know when they say it that you need to pay attention.

@Damien I’ve dropped past your blog and left you a comment. But might was well leave it for homework here for others.

All these terms are definitely designed to confuse us. Personal learning environments are quite different from Personal learning networks. Any one want to explain/debate the difference?

@Carole I’m intrigued by your Push vs Pull examples. I’m still pondering it but isn’t all of them in a sense both push and pull — I suppose depending on how you use?

@Lee yes there is a bit of skill keeping up with your reader and definitely all the RT of this post have made people notice it. While to some extent twitter is a bit like a rating scale I don’t necessarily agree it as efficient as a feed reader but then this will depend on how many people you are following and how efficient you are using both.

The other aspect I would argue is that the size of your network impacts on the number of retweets. The larger my Twitter following gets the more RTs I get. There are reasons why probloggers build large FB and twitter networks.

Thanks for completing my survey and yes Valentina mentioned your VoiceThread.

@Darcy Thanks for telling your readers about it via a post. I really appreciate it as I would like to counteract the potential bias being created by the number of RTs.

@JoNelle I’ve always found different tools take differencing times to appreciate their value. Blogging was a year for me, Flickr was similar while Twitter was perhaps 2 months? Nowadays if someone who I really respect sees value I make sure that I take the time to check it out.

I look forward to the data and wrote a quick blog post to link to your post, as requested: http://darcymoore.net/2009/10/05/pln-yourself/

I still use Plurk, but not as much as Twitter and I use VoiceThread when I want to bring people together. As @Valentina mentioned, I am planning for a presentation to Dean Shareski’s class on building a PLN. I wanted to create a starting point for them that is more personal. It thought a VT with images, voices and more than 140 characters would be helpful. I hope you’ll add yourself here too: http://test012321.ed.voicethread.com/share/645976/

I’ll complete your survey and pass it on as well. Thanks!

I’m also now a really big fan of all things Google – and I like using Google sites as a way of avoiding the problems within some organisations where social networking sites like Ning and Wetpaint are blocked.

My website is my Wordpress blog and I’m constantly revisiting and changing it, and embedding the blogs into my other sites.

Pull Examples:
Facebook, Twitter and Diigo help notify me directly to my email about what’s happening in my wider networks; I’ve embedded Tweets within my Facebook page. Of course I also subscribe to the Blogs and Newsletters in our educational world to ensure that I don’t miss any important news.

Thanks for this article, Sue, you have really made me think about my PLNs.

Coach Carole

And what would I do without my communication tools like Gtalk, Skype and Elluminate to let me connect briefly or for extended times with individuals and groups.