Information Explosion
Since the advent of WWW , the number of websites have been doubling itself every year. Leave aside the hidden web or the deep web for the time being. If we want to explore the power of the web we would have to live for a little over a million years. The size of the web has been a popular discussion topic amongst both the academia and industry professionals. I remember attending a seminar on information extraction from the web using heuristics and other algortihms. Well, that was an academic seminar and was related to finding ways to make the information more accessible. A few days later I attended another seminar presented by an industry professional who talked about the expansion of web and the difficulty in capturing this information.
The traditional way to access the information is through the use of a search engine. The search engine technology has improved a lot from the directory based search engine started by Yahoo!. However everyone talks about the expansion of the web and the difficulty to find relevant information. Instead is there a way to filter information by involving the human element. There are search engines which are doing their job by indexing billions of web pages every day and throwing up results for the key words you want on the click of a button.
Is it time to ask ourselves if we need this much amount of information or we are content with the information we can digest ? If the answer to above question is No then we definitely need a different approach to look for information. The war is on in the search engine areana and its all for good. Competition is good for consumers. If there is a Google and a Yahoo and a Microsoft and an Amazon competing in the search engine market and are providing faster more reliable searches , it is definitely advantageous for the customers. I would encourage this competition and help them improve the way they look at information.
I am concerned about the time people spend on the search engines looking for information. A change in perspective would provide a satisfactory experience on the web. I have been using the web for 8 long years. I come across a website and use it most of the times. Like I use yahoo to upload photos and snapfish to order prints and shutterfly to utilize my free prints. There could be other websites which I am not aware of. There is a flickr which a lot of people use then there is Picasa a photo search tool and there is Hello which is also a google product.
Things are changing new websites are emerging, old websites are enhancing their content. However in all this mush, one thing remains common that I go for the same website again and again. If there is a blog or a discssion forum providing details about the quality websites and people discuss about it from time to time it will be very much possible for them to know which are the best websites and the quality websites. The human element is important. If you are looking for deals you might use froogle or pricegrabber or bizrate but there are more like deals2buy and many more such sites which people don't know about. If there is a discussion forum where in websites are discussed based on the topic and then we can access such discussions to determine what are the best websites we will be able to know about better websites. Its called incremental growth in knowledge.
So it is time now to have a change in perspective of looking for information. Search engines are definitely good but an element of experience and endorsement will provide a human touch to these search engines. The idea can be taken forward by search engines listing popular websites for different categories. This will provide the users a good starting point as to where to go instead of just typing int he search engine box.
What is important is to create a parallel piece backed by a self policing rating provided to websites for a variety of categories. If I want to read some good computer content and know about the trends my favorite place would be to go to say computerworld.com or informationweek.com However for some other people it would be Business2.com or any other related technology magazine. The idea is not to compete with the search engines but to create a parallel feedback based content where in freedom of discussion and recommendation would work. As more and more people are relying on the word of mouth publicity websites will definitely be more than happy to provide incentive to people who will get them more customers.
It would be good if we start looking for footsteps left by people who have already been there on a website than to leave it on to a search algorithm to tell us if we were looking for the informaiton thats listed on the top of the page of the search result.
The traditional way to access the information is through the use of a search engine. The search engine technology has improved a lot from the directory based search engine started by Yahoo!. However everyone talks about the expansion of the web and the difficulty to find relevant information. Instead is there a way to filter information by involving the human element. There are search engines which are doing their job by indexing billions of web pages every day and throwing up results for the key words you want on the click of a button.
Is it time to ask ourselves if we need this much amount of information or we are content with the information we can digest ? If the answer to above question is No then we definitely need a different approach to look for information. The war is on in the search engine areana and its all for good. Competition is good for consumers. If there is a Google and a Yahoo and a Microsoft and an Amazon competing in the search engine market and are providing faster more reliable searches , it is definitely advantageous for the customers. I would encourage this competition and help them improve the way they look at information.
I am concerned about the time people spend on the search engines looking for information. A change in perspective would provide a satisfactory experience on the web. I have been using the web for 8 long years. I come across a website and use it most of the times. Like I use yahoo to upload photos and snapfish to order prints and shutterfly to utilize my free prints. There could be other websites which I am not aware of. There is a flickr which a lot of people use then there is Picasa a photo search tool and there is Hello which is also a google product.
Things are changing new websites are emerging, old websites are enhancing their content. However in all this mush, one thing remains common that I go for the same website again and again. If there is a blog or a discssion forum providing details about the quality websites and people discuss about it from time to time it will be very much possible for them to know which are the best websites and the quality websites. The human element is important. If you are looking for deals you might use froogle or pricegrabber or bizrate but there are more like deals2buy and many more such sites which people don't know about. If there is a discussion forum where in websites are discussed based on the topic and then we can access such discussions to determine what are the best websites we will be able to know about better websites. Its called incremental growth in knowledge.
So it is time now to have a change in perspective of looking for information. Search engines are definitely good but an element of experience and endorsement will provide a human touch to these search engines. The idea can be taken forward by search engines listing popular websites for different categories. This will provide the users a good starting point as to where to go instead of just typing int he search engine box.
What is important is to create a parallel piece backed by a self policing rating provided to websites for a variety of categories. If I want to read some good computer content and know about the trends my favorite place would be to go to say computerworld.com or informationweek.com However for some other people it would be Business2.com or any other related technology magazine. The idea is not to compete with the search engines but to create a parallel feedback based content where in freedom of discussion and recommendation would work. As more and more people are relying on the word of mouth publicity websites will definitely be more than happy to provide incentive to people who will get them more customers.
It would be good if we start looking for footsteps left by people who have already been there on a website than to leave it on to a search algorithm to tell us if we were looking for the informaiton thats listed on the top of the page of the search result.
posted by AG & HDG at 2:41 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home