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 Mobile - Web - Media  Monday, Sep 12, 2005 2:19:51 PM
Search? That's Yesterday, We Discover Content Now The following is a response post of mine over at MoCoNews.net, a blog covering "mobile content news"The posting covers the announcement from GoFish.com, stating: "it has launched a search engine — www.searchwebmedia.com — which integrates web and multimedia searches…so a search will not only bring up web pages that contain the text searched for but various audio and video results along with mobile content such as ringtones and images I took a look at the search site and wasn't impressed. When I tired a search, all I was given was a standard google search result set (I searched on: electronica). The quick summary... I don't see http://www.searchwebmedia.com/ being a player on any level. What caught my eye on the MoCoNews.net posting, was the statements by the "research director with Gartner’s Industries Media team." If you aren't familiar with the Gartner group, they are basically a body that conducts research on markets. In their own words: Research and analysis of information technology companies, products, and services, and of several industry sectors. Custom research and consulting services. You would think these folks would be really sharp, maybe they are - but in this case, I don't understand why are still thinking in the 'old ways.' OLD?!?!? Yes, 'search' is old, now let's dive in! >>> "Intelligently integrating multiple content streams — digital songs, music videos, ringtones, podcasts, and text content — into coherent and easy-to-navigate search results will be a permanent differentiator for digital media content providers." Mike McGuire, is right, but the solution needs to do a lot more than index the content and sort it by file type. In order to provide real value, a solution will need to go beyond the aging search paradigm. The process of obtaining content with quality and relevancy, is rapidly becoming difficult with the ever growing volume of content on the Web. How can a simple query on a keyword or name serve the needs of the user of tomorrow, especially, the mobile user? Here is where Mr. McGuire gets it wrong, in my opinion: "easy-to-navigate search results" is not a solution for a data drenched world. I'm sorry, but I'm done navigating. The systems should be navigating for me, not just displaying pages of results. The answer, is to move towards intelligent suggestion engines similar to what you would see on Amazon.com, where the system becomes aware of interests, your click-path through the site, words you search on, what you buy, what you want, etc. But this isn't the complete answer, as we can't rely on the algorithms to get everything right, so we add in 'social bookmarking' to the mix. With a social bookmarking environment, we now have our peers helping shape the results of a search - all connected by tags and selected based on personal preference. When it comes to media, you don't want to sit there browsing though 'easy-to-navigate search results,' you tend to want to find a good song or ringtone right now - or if you are looking for something specific, you don't want a result set, you just want the item. >>> "Portals and content companies would be wise to invest in the next stage of search as it will continue to be encouraged and supported by the growth of the digital media ecosystem." Yes, again, Mr. McGuire is correct, but I think it's key that people realize that search isn't going to be what it used to be, that we will evolve the concept of search to something more like "intelligent agents" who know our interests, that can pro actively discover content for us, harvest it, and provide us with the ability to explore a result set if we wish. I'm responding to this blog posting, because I recently outlined a plan for a 'suggestion engine' or what I'm calling a "Content Discovery Engine" which will be used to assist Web users in discovering better content on ArtistServer.com. Take a look at this chart: http://www.artistserver.com/mss.cfm?mss=4 This points toward the type of system users will need when interacting with a media portal. While this diagram does display the pieces to the puzzle, it doesn't display how the suggestions are formed. That's the tricky part! I think one of the main differences between what I'm suggesting, and what Mr. McGuire of the Gartner Group proposed, is the idea of content discovery over content search. We had time to search in the 90's, it was fun. Now, halfway though the first decade of 2000, we are getting a bit tired of searching. If you don't know what I'm talking about, try joining a social bookmarking site. After two months of browsing what others add to the site and adding your own items, you'll start to understand what I mean. 
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MoCoNews.net
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