Best foot Sideward

It's a noisy world

Photo credit - Binkiexxx

There is way too much information in this world. This is good in a way. It means we as a human race are constantly thinking, debating, inventing and documenting. It also means that finding the right information to consume at the right time by the right person is difficult. The curve of good/useful information grows significantly slower than the curve of all information. This means the problem of finding the right information to consume at the right time by the right person is only going to get worse as time progresses. This leads to an inevitability –

Information has become and will increasingly be a commodity. But the information aggregator has become and will increasingly be invaluable.

Think about it. Here are some examples,

You may write all the blog posts you want and can. But you’re at the mercy of Google to surface it to potential searchers.

You can create all the niche art/music you want and can. But you’re at the mercy of Amazon to surface it to potential searchers.

You may tweet all you want and can. But you’re at the mercy of Twitter search to surface it to potential followers.

Here are the ways we consume information online,

Search (pull) - Google search and Amazon search. Include paid listings. Google is an aggregator.

Stay informed through request (push) - RSS, Twitter & Facebook feeds, IM status updates. Google Reader, Tweetdeck etc. are aggregators. Magazines you subscribe to. AllTop for example is an aggregator. Radio stations you create/subscribe to. Pandora and Rhapsody are aggregators. Mailing lists you opted into.

Recommendations (pull) - Sites like Digg where you get recommendations from a community. Digg is an aggregator. Amazon’s recommendation engine and product reviews. Amazon is an aggregator. Techmeme and blog recommendations. Techmeme is an aggregator. YouTube's recommended videos. YouTube is an aggregator.

Stay informed (push) - Email and other “inbox” solutions where you don’t control what information arrives. Gmail is an aggregator. It helps you manage your email and spam. Your snail mail address.

Advertised to (push) - Contextual & display advertising. Google Adwords, Microsoft adCenter are aggregators.

OK, so information can get commoditized. What you tweet could be tweeted by someone else. There could be a 1000 good marketing related blogs. Your country music album would be one of thousands enjoyed by people. Your product review will be one of hundreds on Amazon. OK, so information does get commoditized :). Will information aggregators get commoditized?

No. Not if you intentionally create network effects! Aggregators will not get commoditized if there’s possibility of a network effect.

Google and Gmail have already successfully created network effects for search, advertising and IM. Amazon has done so for niche products and product reviews. Digg has done so for link recommendations. YouTube has done so for user uploaded videos. These products have become the first choice for their respective categories due to network effects.

Now, is there a repeatable formula for network effects? Sure there are. Here is one. What do you think?

1. Look at the information you are aggregating.
   
2. Find one operation on that information that will be useful to both the operating user and the world.
   
3. Enable that operation on your aggregator. 
4. Enable the operator to identify themselves using a identity solution
   
5. There you have a network effect!

Example: Take Google News. How do you make a network effect? Enable readers to mark news stories as interesting. Make the system inform the reader of updates to the story they marked (the marking reader gets value). Enable other readers to see how many readers have marked any given link. Enable a Gmail reader to see their Gmail friends who have marked a given news link. This helps readers pick what they want to read. This induces a network effect!

Facebook feature request

Facebook has successfully made conversation a feature as opposed to a destination. Let me explain. Earlier, one could write on a friend's wall to kick off a conversation. The wall was the destination for conversation. Then came the fun wall, super wall etc. Now, Facebook has made everything (almost everything) conversation ready media. Your photos, videos, links, notes, status updates are all commentable. Every "media" (in a loose sense) in Facebook is commentable. This is exactly the promise of social media.

Now, here's the feature request. Make all comments taggable. Notice in the image above, I have commented referring to Kevin Rose. Now, if only I could tag that text with the Facebook profile for Kevin, multiple things become possible. Readers of this comment are able to find who Kevin is. Kevin can be notified that he has been tagged in a comment. And he may find it appropriate to join in on the conversation. It also helps Kevin keep track of his reputation within the social network. Just thinking out loud. What do you think?

Note that Twitter already does this by using the @(username) paradigm.