Here is a brief history of the Internet in bullet list format:
- DoD develops ARPANET, the first operational packet switching network.
- Several networks merge and TCP/IP become the approved protocol of ARPANET.
- ISPs start springing up along with Usenet, e-mail, other peer-to-peer and peer-to-many apps.
- Hypertext springs up and we see the World Wide Web emerging along with Web publishing.
- First wave of content inundation hits us and content search-and-retrieval becomes an issue.
- Google comes and solves the search-and-retrieval issue.
- A new generation of brands emerge from the dotcom crash that leverage power of collaborative networks (eBay, Amazon, etc.)
- Web publishing technologies (blogging) and collaborative networking come to the masses
- Convergence of various mediums onto online platform
- Second wave of content inundation hits us
- Personalization of the Web
Note – if I’m missing anything big please let me know…
Initially, there were two basic functions of the Web. Maria Bakardjieva offers the consumption model and the community model. The consumption model is based in an origin of search and retrieval of data; while the community model, has roots in the earliest stages of network development when communication was the envisioned application. It is an imperfect dichotomy but useful nevertheless.
The first wave of content inundation was one of consumption. It was created by the introduction of hypertext and emergence of the World Wide Web. With many of the barriers to entry for publishers dropped on the WWW, anyone could become a content publisher if they had a computer, Internet access, and a certain degree of technical competence.
The consequent problem was one of information search-and-retrieval in this model because there was a lot of data but no singular, efficient way to organize and retrieve that data…
The question of how organize and retrieve Web data was answered through a number of methods including creation of directories (DMOZ, Yahoo!) and of course, development of Web search engines.
Search engines sorted data in usable ways and provided people with a filter through which they could retrieve the content they were interested in amidst the massive amount of data on the Web. Internet usage normalized (relatively speaking) for a few years because people could more or less find the information they were looking for.
You could say that search engines solved the issue of consumption of media online.
Initially, Web publishing was restricted to those who are technically savvy (people who can learn HTML, CSS, etc.). The creation of content in a consumption paradigm therefore was more or less restricted and search engines were scalable regardless.
Community-oriented content development was more or less restricted to peer-to-peer via e-mail, or many-to-many through closed networks like Bulletin Board Systems.
A few factors have come together to create a situation where the traditional search engine model is no longer adequate as a singular solution to content inundation:
- The explosion of community-driven content – Web publishing utilities have become easier to use and more easily accessible. These trends have created the foundation for the blog revolution / Web 2.0 / social media, etc.
- Integration of multimedia -At the same time, increasing proliferation of high-bandwidth Internet and evolving compression technologies have facilitated the integration of more multimedia content onto the Web. The search engine solution is good for text-based content but imperfect as a multimedia solution.
These two trends have created a second tidal wave of information that overwhelms us on a daily basis.
About five years ago I would have a manageable routine each day: check e-mail, check a few online newspapers and publications, participate in a bulletin board, use search engines to find information.
Now, every day I open up Outlook and have hundreds of e-mails and blog postings pour in; see comments in MySpace and Facebook; watch video highlights from the previous night’s games; watch the news; read comments left on my own blog; etc.
There is a second wave of content inundation hitting us right now and people are simply becoming overwhelmed once again, which creates a new question.
The group of people who answer this new question will become incredibly rich.
I instinctively feel that the answer to this new question is evident in the following innovations:
- Facebook‘s Personalized Newsfeed - Facebook aggregates all of the individual changes in your social network into one newsfeed that is the first thing you see when you log-in, so at a glance you can quickly see what is new in your social network.
- Match.com Recommendations - Dating sites like Match.com look at your personal profile and your communications patterns, and then provide suggestions based on those data points.
- Amazon.com ‘Recommended for You’ – Looks at your purchasing patterns and offers tailored suggestions for items you might want to purchase.
- LinkedIn ‘People You May Know’ - Offers people who you should connect with based on some data points (I don’t know what they are).
- iGoogle / My Yahoo / Netvibes - These are literally personalized portals that you can use to import RSS feeds, manage content, access different data points…
The underlying trend between all these features is that they are all tailored to help the everyday user cope with the second wave of content inundation through some sort of data mining or aggregation and organization of personalized content.
The next big answer will involve more intelligent approaches to community-driven communications such as a new algorithm for determining visibility in community-driven communications, aimed at creating a new level of filtration that helps us prioritize what is truly important and worthy of our time and effort online; it will also help balance the various mediums that are becoming increasingly convergent online.
The next big answer will be about once again, helping the everyday user emerge from their current schizophrenic state into one that is more grounded – allowing them to again focus on using the Internet instead of vice-versa.
I like this summary of Web history to date and possibilities for the future.
Recommendation and filtration seem to be the dominant themes of “what’s next”. I’m just concerned that some people may make a jump from “reading my mind” to “making my decision for me”.
Aggregation is the key word here. I tend to believe the Calacanis/Keen model of human human and expertise filtering content for you. But the question is, how are experts are made? Is interest and passion in a subject area enough to be deemed an expert? Nonetheless, I do believe that cutting through the noise is people-powered.
Hi there,
Thanks for this great post!
Re the “Calacanis/Keen model of human human and expertise filtering content for you”.
Kevin I think we need more moderation about human filtering. I mean I don’t feel like it is relevant to name this old time reality by a couple of web actors. Stowe Boyd once in London was kind enough to do a private conference at Headshift about the “flow”. And in this flow, information was coming from known and accepted sources. Actually what we see here is nothing more than an old habit. Up to the emergence of institutionalized mass media, the best channel for getting attention was word of mouth. Information flows from one to another and diffuse to a certain extend depending on the level of confidence we have on the information provider. Depending on the confidence we would remix the message by adding a certain level of subjectivity, like “this is crap” or “this is great”. Subjectivity is the filter but subjectivity is filtered too. The capacity to diffuse the info is based on recognition exactly as it happens within the blogosphere.
Re the “I’m just concerned that some people may make a jump from “reading my mind” to “making my decision for me””.
Mark, you are right but I think we already are beyond that. I mean the problem already is there. It is there on the wild wild web as behind any participative website, wikipedia first, there is a hierarchy that influences the content. For instance, the French wikipedia is known to be very restrictive as it is lead by “deletionists” while the Spanish and English ones are more liberal as managed by “inclusionists”. Check Kaboodle as an article in those three sister encyclopedia. I was referring at the time to a small Santa Clara based start-up doing social shopping. The very same article in three different languages. English and Spanish Wikipedia accepted it, the French version deleted in in less than 3 days. It was immediately flagged and the 3 day review process was very similar to Mc Carty’s : a tiny tribe of friends decided it was not good and declared for the sake of the “community” that this article was to be deleted.
This happens behind the firewall too. I mention that because there is a trend towards having second generation web entering the organization (Enterprise 2.0). The hierarchy makes decision for you in areas where you are supposedly clever enough to decide. For instance, it is by managerial decision that you are given access to certain info or restricted to use the web. In certain projects I manage, clients do want a blog but do not want to allow conversations. The blog is there is for publishing corporate info and comments are either prohibited or subject to a lengthy review process that kills spontaneity and therefore conversations.
Now to get back to the article itself, I reiterate that it is a very nice one. There are couple of elements I would like to discuss:
1) not all tools are on the same level. Blogs and wikis are excellent for producing contents (1st level), social networks are excellent for diffusing information (2nd level) and RSS and aggregators are excellent for capturing information (3rd level). Obviously level 3 helps fuel level 1 so that we have a “virtuous” circle here.
2) Relevance comes from the sources but also the purpose.
The social computing stack we both describe is to be organized toward a certain purpose. Otherwise it is only a bunch of tools that produce nor value nor relevance. So that one needs to think purpose and process, not technology when choosing its tools, whether as an individual or as an organization. Too much social computing projects fail because people believe that the tool will do everything by itself. This is a belief inherited from previous IT: one problem, one solution.
3) The issue now is not to store but to access information
There is a shift of problematic here. And one way to sort it out is to let the end-user decide and manage what information s/he gets, from which source. This is the reason why I see, in addition to powerful rss filtering and trusted peer networks of information distribution, real value in personalized portals. They allow aggregation of information, personalization and simplification (one roof) of the of the user experience. This is the reason why I see those tools being the first and principal point of entry to information, on the web but also in organizations. Search engine and document folders would probably see their domination decreasing in the coming years. Netvibes and iGoogle definitely are great tools on web, apparently PersonAll
follows the same path but works in and for organizations.