With the advent of "we media" there are way more writers and editors online than anyone has the opportunity to follow these days. Add to that the gynormous amount of information and you know that it is almost physically impossible to keep up.
It turns out that semantic search is useful also to editors. Back in March we discussed how search is aligning with data as Yahoo! Search announced its new open search ecosystem. There is a technology from Inform that is at the initial stages of providing web matches for stories readers might be interested in. It does that by contextualizing the information.
Who uses Inform? According to the site, publications like Ziff Davis, Nielsen, IDG, Washingtonpost.com, Newsweek, NBC, Scientific American, The New Yorker, Conde' Nast, Wired and more. August Fields, Vice President & General Manager, The New York Sun said:
“Since implementing Inform, we've seen a 15% to 20% increase in two important metrics - the number of page views per visit, and the length of time readers stay at our site. We evaluated a lot of products and Inform was the best technology available today.”
Portfolio.com is now more a destination than a search result, and Computerworld reports its site has been turned into a richer content experience for it readers. The most valuable function online is search, we all know that. Imagine what happens when search is automated to the point that (potentially) no editors are needed to sort through the information and present it in a digestible format.
Is this indeed a richer media experience? Do you browse through the links? Is so much information useful? I like the idea of framing the context around a story, posting related stories around it. But is this too much of a good thing? Can an algorithm, even when a smart one, replace human experience?
Thanks for introducing me to Inform. Tools like this are great because no one can keep up with all the great content available to them online. It's always nice to stumble upon a new blog and see your screen light up with links to posts on the blog worth hours of reading and a pile of new ideas.
I believe there's a WordPress plugin that does something similar. It's one of the reasons I'm itching to switch my blog away from Blogger in 2009.
Posted by: Daniel J. Pritchett | September 26, 2008 at 05:09 PM