The Attack of the Giant Aggregators

Years ago, long before the web, the woe mongers warned of the information explosion. Now people hardly mention it. Probably buried in all that information. But we have not been overwhelmed by information because our species long ago developed a two layer defense against information overload: Ignore and aggregate.

These days, the web offers us a huge amount of information to ignore. Or to feed the aggregators if they get big enough to take it on. The first web aggregators applied what I call the horseless carriage model of aggregation. The first cars were “horseless carriages.” People saw them as doing the same job as carriages. Just without a horse.

We can laugh now at that short-sighted interpretation. The car revolutionized Western culture in the last century. The web will revolutionize culture in this century. But not until we outgrow the viewpoint that the web is just a convenient way to do things the way we used to.

Those first web aggregators (think Yahoo) made up directories. You needed directories in the olden days so when you looked for things, you could know where to look. People soon recognized that a computer could also use terms to find things. The first web-oriented aggregator appeared. The search engine. But those old directories did not just organize. The also evaluated. Google met that need by using a kind of popularity as a basis for evaluation. Trouble is, Google gives me a million items. I only want one.

I talked about this need for evaluation in an earlier blog (SEE YOU LATER, AGGREGATOR): What you want is of no use to you if you can’t find it. And something is not cheap if you have to spend a lot of time finding it. (Unless your time is cheap.) So the crucial need now is to evaluate. Perhaps there is a role here for different kinds of aggregators. For example, one that aggregates evaluations.

Digg is one of the new breed that aggregates evaluations of news items. Digg members evaluate and a news item rises to the top if a lot of members “dig” it.

Another level of development appears in Stumbleupon. This technology evaluates websites to support a new kind of browsing. Instead of using a generic evaluation to fit all readers, it seeks to cluster users into similarity groups. It then gives and gets evaluations from users with similar interests.

The Universal Aggregator. Stumbleupon (despite its poor choice in a name) does seem to be on the right track to evolve into a universal aggregator. Serves everybody. But does not serve the same product to everybody. Hears everybody. But sends the evaluation only to those who want it. Not just an aggregator of web pages. An aggregator of evaluations.

That’s what we need. The better the evaluation, the less we have to ignore.