This is really well written and I am glad that more and more people are bringing up the real issues. The information filtering and organization problem is definitely becoming more challenging with the flood of new information/intelligence from user generated content in a number of forms including blogs and comments on blogs as well as from human interaction via tagging and rating. PageRank definitely is going to be of less use when we want to filter and organize this new tagged and rated information. I definitely agree with the point of view of leveraging the user interaction aspect but as you pointed out an explicit model like Digg or Reddit is prone to problems you have covered very well.
I believe a better model could be an implicit tracking of user interaction (like clicks on search results etc.) and adding weightage to such interactions in re-ranking, filtering and consolidation of content. The realization of this can vary from segment to segment but I fully agree that the a specific set of users can be far more effective than a more generic large group. At iNods, our audience is users who are search for reviews and advice and we definitely want to build a model to leverage user interaction to filter better review results and rank them higher. A big challenge but we want to atleast try and address it :)
Mark Devlin
· 3 years ago
This discussion reminds me of Open Source vs. Microsoft.
You say that some audience groups are smarter than others but discount the fact that mainstream media already has a highly-informed group of people that are making decisons for their audience - editors and publishers. Those people are generally smarter and better informed than their audience. Not to mention the people behind them who work to keep the business of media running.
To ask MSM to start "engaging their audience" is incorrect terminology (and slightly condescending). They have been engaging their audience very effectively for years. What you are asking for is for them to provide systems for greater audience participation. However, explicit audience participation in news is only once part of the solution. Most mainstream readers do not have the time or inclination to actively participate in selecting their news -- they just want to read, or watch, a presentation of news. I can see this from my own site, where the proportion of posters to readers is 100 to one. There is however, much to be said for implicit models, although it should be remembered that people come to news sites not to read what they know, but to read something different ;)
Digg, etc don't work well because they conform to the wider meaning of democracy: the rule of the mob. They reflect the difference between these two questions: Do you want to read what everyone else thinks is popular? Or do you want to read what is most interesting to you? Although algorithms will become more sophisticated there will always be room for highly informed human editors (a representative democracy?) to interact with audiences.
"The future of media is somewhere between Old Media and Web 2.0" is not a particularly bold prediction. It is more interesting is to predict where the boundary will lie. It is already clear that MSM is adapting to maintain their audience. Their efforts to co-opt bloggers and to add various "new media"-like products to their media leads me to believe that the boundary will resolve in MSM's favor.
Any person wanting to start a new media based on technology alone should think carefully about the values implicit in MSM, the methods they use, and about how easy it is for MSM to copy new media features.
Anonymous
· 3 years ago
Great post! It's great to see that finally someone has addressed the issues of media overflow so adequately and eloquently. I think Web2.0 entrepreneurs should stop focusing on creating another "cool" content aggregration application but instead focus on the right issue of addressing the content overflow. From user's perspective(my point of view as well), it's real pain in the as* to see so many content aggregration sites like Digg, Meomerandum, Slashdot come up of nowhere since the dawn of web2.0. STOP!...... We do really have enough of all these.
Gabe
· 3 years ago
Interesting discussion. I've been thinking along these lines for a while now, and even have my own solution sketched out. The result won't look too much like memeorandum, though some of the technology may be involved. In anyone wants to talk about this (about the possibility of actually building something) please let me know.
BTW, I'm not too big on personalization like the current crop of "meme trackers" are attempting. I believe it won't be good enough. I think we'll all be sifting through headlines, passing on most of what comes up for years to come.
Nir Ben-Dor
· 3 years ago
Whoever finds this middle ground between audiences and applications, between human intelligence and technology, will win the media game.
The solution to the problem of scattered massive amount of small sources of information will come, like in most industries and human trends, from consolidation. Not that of the users (like what we can see at Digg and Reddit) but of the content creators.
Good bloggers, writing on similar subjects will realise the benefit of synergy. An online magazine for example, written by 5 good bloggers will have much larger audience and be much more attractive than the sum of the 5 individual blogs. The reasons are 1) that it will be more of a one stop shop helping readers solve their need efficiently reading. 2) Search engines will bring in much more traffic than the sum of the 5 blogs 3) The bloggers will be able to focus on interesting topics rather than repeating other blogger's topics. (one blogger will have to focus on Google for the other 4 will be able to write about other things)
I'm curious to know why you included only 5 headlines from reddit as opposed to 7 from digg -- especially when the reddit front page contains far more links.
siggi
· 3 years ago
Yes and yes. Competence and intelligence are unequally distributed since stoneage. That the technology to publish is becoming easier doesn´t mean we as a whole are becoming more intelligent or even informed. Digg/Reddit etc are mob live. But competence and intelligence isn´t something which can´t be assigned "democratically".
The next step in "relevance" will come with just a little bit artificial intelligence or textunderstanding. And this day will come... (Sorry for my english; native german)
Pete Cashmore
· 3 years ago
"But isn’t the idea of personalized memetracker moving away from community?"
I don't think so - so long as the recommendations happen in an explicit way ("there are 20 people with similar preferences to you - do you want to visit their profiles?") then personalization and community are complementary.
"So Pete is right that tribes can evolve on their own, but I’m not sure that is the best approach from a business standpoint. It’s still very technology-centric to build an app and let it lead people where they may. It’s more people-centric to realize that most affinity groups or tribes form around specific topics, interests, or objectives, and these affinity groups aren’t necessarily served well by the same app."
Yep - I agree. At the end of that post I tried to explain that we need to do both - define the group we want to cater to *and* let tribes evolve around topics: "In truth, we probably need a bit of both - defining the tribe in some instances, and in other instances building tools that allow tribes to build themselves."
I think there's probably a way to tie MySpace into this conversation too. A lot of us are surprised by how such a technologically backward site (with - gasp!- no tagging!) could be so successful. I still struggle to explain why MySpace has enjoyed more success than similar social plays, but one reason might be that it is people-focused, rather than technology-focused. (I also happen to think that MySpace was very lucky.)
On a sidenote: did MySpace define its audience as 16-25 year olds from the outset, or did that audience evolve on its own? And does this lead to a vicious (or virtuous?) circle where the dominant group forces out the minority groups in the network, while attracting yet more members to the dominant group? An example of this trend might be Orkut, which is (allegedly) popular with Brazillians. Does this attract yet more Brazillians to join while dissuading everyone else?
Scott Karp
· 3 years ago
Pete, MySpace solved a problem for young people -- it helped them to socilaize in broader and more diverse ways, at a time when many don't have their own space - the name says it all! MySpace may have been fortunately timed, but it addressed a real need that a defined group of people have. And that has little to do with technology.
Your observation about the self-reinforcing nature of networks is intriguing -- if it's true, it should be deliberately harnessed.
Seth Finkelstein
· 3 years ago
I think this phrase captures the conflict: "... to find what you WANT or what you NEED"?
Finding what's *popular* is easier and more profitable than what's "important". In order to find the popular, you just poll either the crowd, or the demagogues (people who are experts - at what's popular). That's very simple (relatively speaking).
But how do you find what's important, what you *need*? What do you code for? The first cut is to poll a niche rather than a general audience. But problems there are that there might not be enough of a sample, and the economics are even less supportable.
These questions don't often get discussed extensively because the hype-machine runs on populism and demogoguery, so that's what gets amplified and echoed. But also, there's more to discuss, and moreover, a service which acts to find the popular is, recursively, a popular topic for coverage.
Nobody really knows how to do more.
Dave Winer
· 3 years ago
As the blog world becomes more massive it becomes as collectively dumb as the media it was replacing. I feel this every day, some of the people who comment on my writing (you know who I'm talking about) remind me of the cliched image of sports writers, a non-athlete who has no clue what the issues are in sports, but that doesn't stop them from passing judgement.
My suggestion is find people whose judgement you trust, and connect with them both ways, push information to them, and take feedback from them. Assume everyone has some axe to grind, and you probably be far from wrong. Most people do. And they aren't here to do good, most of them, they're hear to get attention for themselves. Somewhere in the midst of all that, some truth emerges. Not much, but enough to make the activity worthwhile, for now, imho.
Keep up the good work, I think you're onto something.
Dave Winer
· 3 years ago
Oy I should always edit before I hit Submit.
I meant "Assume everyone has some axe to grind, and you probably won't be far from wrong."
I think I'm getting Alzheimer's either that or my computer loses whole words while I'm typing. :-)
King Bastard
· 3 years ago
Filters aren't fun.
Hey Dave, when are you going to send me an angry email?
chartreuse
· 3 years ago
Great post and great discussion. All the tech folks really have to do is let go of there apps and put it in the hands of different tribes. They'll figure out what to do with it.
sogodo
· 3 years ago
Digg.com and others are monetary-based enterprises, they exist to get money via advertisments. They do not care much about your or mine particular preferences, and they are pretty good denominator/summarizator of what the crowd wants. I mean it's useful to see what the majority of people collectively filtered out. Yes, technically-inclined people can find artisitc "findings" kind of useless, and vice versa. Still, Diggs.com never pretends to be honest hierarchy of tastes. If your taste is outside of the 75% preferences, you're out of luck. Still it should sound fair for you, right?
David Swedlow
· 3 years ago
After 36 comments, does it still matter? I love the question as framed, but, Scott, I think the answer is off-kilter just a bit. It sounds too much like adherence to the silo model of media.
I agree whole-heartedly with the observation that the memetrackers are tracking sensationalistic noise. That's the way their built. They are mostly just prettier hacks of /.
But that's not where the interesting stuff happens, there in the mosh-pitt of frothing populism. What we want is afficianados digging through heaps of stinking noise looking for their own brands of signal that we can then scrutinize and lavish praise upon, or ignore, as warranted.
All Comments
This is really well written and I am glad that more and more people are bringing up the real issues. The information filtering and organization problem is definitely becoming more challenging with the flood of new information/intelligence from user generated content in a number of forms including blogs and comments on blogs as well as from human interaction via tagging and rating. PageRank definitely is going to be of less use when we want to filter and organize this new tagged and rated information. I definitely agree with the point of view of leveraging the user interaction aspect but as you pointed out an explicit model like Digg or Reddit is prone to problems you have covered very well.
I believe a better model could be an implicit tracking of user interaction (like clicks on search results etc.) and adding weightage to such interactions in re-ranking, filtering and consolidation of content. The realization of this can vary from segment to segment but I fully agree that the a specific set of users can be far more effective than a more generic large group. At iNods, our audience is users who are search for reviews and advice and we definitely want to build a model to leverage user interaction to filter better review results and rank them higher. A big challenge but we want to atleast try and address it :)
You say that some audience groups are smarter than others but discount the fact that mainstream media already has a highly-informed group of people that are making decisons for their audience - editors and publishers. Those people are generally smarter and better informed than their audience. Not to mention the people behind them who work to keep the business of media running.
To ask MSM to start "engaging their audience" is incorrect terminology (and slightly condescending). They have been engaging their audience very effectively for years. What you are asking for is for them to provide systems for greater audience participation. However, explicit audience participation in news is only once part of the solution. Most mainstream readers do not have the time or inclination to actively participate in selecting their news -- they just want to read, or watch, a presentation of news. I can see this from my own site, where the proportion of posters to readers is 100 to one. There is however, much to be said for implicit models, although it should be remembered that people come to news sites not to read what they know, but to read something different ;)
Digg, etc don't work well because they conform to the wider meaning of democracy: the rule of the mob. They reflect the difference between these two questions: Do you want to read what everyone else thinks is popular?
Or do you want to read what is most interesting to you? Although algorithms will become more sophisticated there will always be room for highly informed human editors (a representative democracy?) to interact with audiences.
"The future of media is somewhere between Old Media and Web 2.0" is not a particularly bold prediction. It is more interesting is to predict where the boundary will lie. It is already clear that MSM is adapting to maintain their audience. Their efforts to co-opt bloggers and to add various "new media"-like products to their media leads me to believe that the boundary will resolve in MSM's favor.
Any person wanting to start a new media based on technology alone should think carefully about the values implicit in MSM, the methods they use, and about how easy it is for MSM to copy new media features.
BTW, I'm not too big on personalization like the current crop of "meme trackers" are attempting. I believe it won't be good enough. I think we'll all be sifting through headlines, passing on most of what comes up for years to come.
The solution to the problem of scattered massive amount of small sources of information will come, like in most industries and human trends, from consolidation. Not that of the users (like what we can see at Digg and Reddit) but of the content creators.
Good bloggers, writing on similar subjects will realise the benefit of synergy. An online magazine for example, written by 5 good bloggers will have much larger audience and be much more attractive than the sum of the 5 individual blogs.
The reasons are
1) that it will be more of a one stop shop helping readers solve their need efficiently reading.
2) Search engines will bring in much more traffic than the sum of the 5 blogs
3) The bloggers will be able to focus on interesting topics rather than repeating other blogger's topics. (one blogger will have to focus on Google for the other 4 will be able to write about other things)
Nir Ben-Dor Linkadelic Magazine
The next step in "relevance" will come with just a little bit artificial intelligence or textunderstanding. And this day will come...
(Sorry for my english; native german)
I don't think so - so long as the recommendations happen in an explicit way ("there are 20 people with similar preferences to you - do you want to visit their profiles?") then personalization and community are complementary.
"So Pete is right that tribes can evolve on their own, but I’m not sure that is the best approach from a business standpoint. It’s still very technology-centric to build an app and let it lead people where they may. It’s more people-centric to realize that most affinity groups or tribes form around specific topics, interests, or objectives, and these affinity groups aren’t necessarily served well by the same app."
Yep - I agree. At the end of that post I tried to explain that we need to do both - define the group we want to cater to *and* let tribes evolve around topics: "In truth, we probably need a bit of both - defining the tribe in some instances, and in other instances building tools that allow tribes to build themselves."
I think there's probably a way to tie MySpace into this conversation too. A lot of us are surprised by how such a technologically backward site (with - gasp!- no tagging!) could be so successful. I still struggle to explain why MySpace has enjoyed more success than similar social plays, but one reason might be that it is people-focused, rather than technology-focused. (I also happen to think that MySpace was very lucky.)
On a sidenote: did MySpace define its audience as 16-25 year olds from the outset, or did that audience evolve on its own? And does this lead to a vicious (or virtuous?) circle where the dominant group forces out the minority groups in the network, while attracting yet more members to the dominant group? An example of this trend might be Orkut, which is (allegedly) popular with Brazillians. Does this attract yet more Brazillians to join while dissuading everyone else?
For a more a disturbing view on MySpace, see the comment by Jim Gilliam on Umair's post: http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/02/why-yah...
Your observation about the self-reinforcing nature of networks is intriguing -- if it's true, it should be deliberately harnessed.
Finding what's *popular* is easier and more profitable than what's "important". In order to find the popular, you just poll either the crowd, or the demagogues (people who are experts - at what's popular). That's very simple (relatively speaking).
But how do you find what's important, what you *need*? What do you code for? The first cut is to poll a niche rather than a general audience. But problems there are that there might not be enough of a sample, and the economics are even less supportable.
These questions don't often get discussed extensively because the hype-machine runs on populism and demogoguery, so that's what gets amplified and echoed. But also, there's more to discuss, and moreover, a service which acts to find the popular is, recursively, a popular topic for coverage.
Nobody really knows how to do more.
My suggestion is find people whose judgement you trust, and connect with them both ways, push information to them, and take feedback from them. Assume everyone has some axe to grind, and you probably be far from wrong. Most people do. And they aren't here to do good, most of them, they're hear to get attention for themselves. Somewhere in the midst of all that, some truth emerges. Not much, but enough to make the activity worthwhile, for now, imho.
Keep up the good work, I think you're onto something.
I meant "Assume everyone has some axe to grind, and you probably won't be far from wrong."
I think I'm getting Alzheimer's either that or my computer loses whole words while I'm typing. :-)
Hey Dave, when are you going to send me an angry email?
All the tech folks really have to do is let go of there apps and put it in the hands of different tribes. They'll figure out what to do with it.
Still it should sound fair for you, right?
I agree whole-heartedly with the observation that the memetrackers are tracking sensationalistic noise. That's the way their built. They are mostly just prettier hacks of /.
But that's not where the interesting stuff happens, there in the mosh-pitt of frothing populism. What we want is afficianados digging through heaps of stinking noise looking for their own brands of signal that we can then scrutinize and lavish praise upon, or ignore, as warranted.