Headline on News.com - Most reliable search tool could be your librarian.
"There are limitations with the search engines," said Marilyn Parr, public service and collections access officer at the Library of Congress.
Hmm... someone from the Library of Congress says that librarians are better than search engines. Conflict of interest anyone?
Mark Cuban has an interesting post up about finding content in an unlimited video on demand world.
In the new world where there are no more channels to guide us he says:
What if there are no linear channels ? With no linear channels, its a mess. Its an expensive mess to promote TV shows. ITs a mess to find them. Its a mess .
I think he's right. I think it's a problem that Aggregate Knowledge can help solve by letting users discover the shows that other people who have gone before them like. I bet our technology can help create "virtual" channels for users where they can tap into the vein of content that they like most.
Imagine you could see that people who liked this show also liked that show. I think it's a good start to showing you things you might be interested in.
Dave posted a comment in my blog post about Vista being late basically attacking Robert Scoble, and then I found a round up he did of people attacking him that he posted.
Let me be clear. I disagree with some of what Scoble says but I think in general that Robert does great work at a really really tough job. Obviously he works for Microsoft and needs to help promote the company but I think that he does it in a way that is pragmatic and open. He frequently points out when the company is making mistakes.
When he gets feedback about the job he's doing (like the bit I put on my blog) he actually takes the time to respond. Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Here's this A-list blogger reaching out and trying to engage in a dialog with a sometimes hostile community about what his company is doing.
I say bravo to Robert Scoble. When you're a pioneer you get a lot of arrows in the back. The world needs more people like him, not less.
Erik Laurence made an interesting comment on my last post. He says:
What she fails to realize is it media companies are not about great content. They're about monetizing great content.
I agree with Erik that you do need to monetize the great content but I think we'd both agree that great content is the starting point.
One interesting thougth I had is can you have a site where the Ads are the content? So if you look at a magazine like Vogue - 90% of the content is advertising. Could you have a website that was the same?
I guess you could argue that the Million Dollar Homepage is an example of this but the problem is that once you've filled up the page you've made your million bucks and are done. How can you scale that?
Danah Boyd who is one of the pioneering researchers in the field writes about why Friendster failed and MySpace succeeded. Based on my time at Tribe.net I agree with much of what she has to say.
Here's a section that I agree with wholeheartedly and which I don't think many people in the Social Networking space understand:
It is not about technological perfection.
Portability of identity doesn't matter. Easy-to-use interfaces don't matter. Visual coherence doesn't matter. Simple navigation doesn't matter. Bugs don't matter. Fancy new technologies don't matter. Simple personalization doesn't matter.
Before you scream "but it does to me!" let me acknowledge that you're right. It does matter to you. The question is whether it matters to the masses. And it doesn't. Especially for teens.
Anyone doing a social network must realize that they are in the media business and NOT the technology business. Think of yourself as a magazine. What's important in a magazine? Is it a really easy to use table of contents? Is it color coded pages that let you find content more easily? No - it's all about really great content.
Why don't more people in the social networking business realize that?
Michael Kanellos from CNet talks about how people get frustrated and are unable to make decsisions when they are presented with too many options. He's got a great statistic about how when you add 10 choices to a 401k plan the number of people who participate actually drops by 2 percent.
I think that he reaches the wrong conclusion though. It's not about providing less choices to people but about providing better guidance. People like choices. People do need to be educated and guided about what choices are best for them though.
There was a great book called Word of Mouse that some of the folks who involved with Net Perceptions wrote. They have a great overview of the different types of recommendations and guidance that sites can give people to help them make decisions. Worth a read.
I'm on a video kick lately.
Here's an awesome talk that Seth Godin gave at Google about why Marketing matters.
Some terrific nuggets in here about how you need to tell a story and how you can design your product to help do that for you.
Check it out!
