The importance of 'searchability'

One mantra that I like to repeat over and over when I speak to people about the power of social networking and web 2.0 is that 'if we all knew what we all knew, we'd be unstoppable.' In other words, one of the greatest limitations that most companies and individuals face when searching for information is that they don't know where to look, or who to ask, for information in the first place.

Social networks are invaluable tools for connecting people to other individuals who have the information that they need.

However, simply having social networks is not enough to make sure that we can find out 'what we all know.' There's one more prerequisite -  the networks must be searchable. The reality is that it doesn't matter how connected to people you are if you don't know what information people in your network have at their fingertips. Unfortunately, while the vast majority of social networks can be searched for 'social' content (like interests, favorite bands and TV shows), very few can also be searched for expertise. But as companies increasingly embrace social media and everything it can offer, I believe that making people and their individual talents 'searchable' will be increasingly important.

The organisation of data into easy to navigate 'chunks' is so important, that people are now suggesting that functionality will form the basis of web 3.0. Exciting!

I stumbled across the following video recently that describes just how important searchability is, and what a huge role it will play in the future of the internet. It's really worth a watch!

Web 3.0 from Kate Ray on Vimeo.

Diff-functional (n): Differently Functional

I had a great conversation with Ken Wallace on the weekend, who’s not only a cracking screenwriter but also has the pleasure of being my brother-in-law. He has recently had his second child, and was saying how he thinks in general people consider the way that they parent, ‘normal’. Everyone else does it incorrectly or abnormally.

That is, you become your own benchmark for what is ‘normal’. Everything else is a bit wacky or, often, ‘dysfunctional’.

There is such wisdom in this – it is not just parenting, it’s everything. We become our own benchmark for what ‘normal’ all the time. And then we get caught up in diagnosing problems with others; we talk about how people need to change and improve and fix things.

Generally by ‘improve’ we mean ‘become more like us’!

But I actually think there is another approach to consider: that other people aren’t ‘dysfunctional’, but rather diff-functional.

Differently functional.

It is a useful lens to consider others’ mindsets not as being dysfunctional because they are different, but as being just that: different. How much we might gain from acting not from a desire to change or correct, but from a desire to understand and learn! Consider this the next time you’re about to launch into a self-righteous tirade about this and that; maybe it’s not wrong, just different?

The power (or at least the omnipresence) of the internet

I came across the following video the other day:

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from JESS3 on Vimeo.

This is a fascinating look at the amount of data seen, generated, and shared over the internet.

Two things jumped out at me from this video. The first is just how powerful the internet is becoming as a way to reach and connect with people. It's an important reminder that we need to re-evaluate the stereotypical view of the internet as a social barrier and instead consider it a social enabler. It's not something that people use because they don't want to form meaningful relationships with people - its a tool that people are increasingly using to connect with like-minded individuals around the world.

The second is how bombarded we are with information - the number of tweets, emails and spam that we are exposed to is growing at an ever-increasing rate. And this means that companies and individuals who are trying to harness the capacity of the internet to connect with people are facing an increasingly difficult task. This has two implications. Firstly, there's going to be a huge market for software developers to design tools that help users to cut through the increasingly baffling array of choices out there. Some of the more forward-thinking developers are already doing this. Apple's Genius tool, for instance, is helping individuals sort through their increasingly gargantuan iTunes libraries to choose playlists that users will like. Cyndicate (the fantastic RSS reader by Cynical Peak Software) allows users to rate their favourite blog posts, and then sorts all new blog posts according to what it believes you will find most interesting. A huge asset given that I get hundreds of new blogs daily from the number of sites that I subscribe to. Secondly, anyone who's trying to use the internet to disseminate information is going to have to provide increasingly valuable offerings if they want people to take the time and energy to read their material.

But don't let these considerations get you down. The most important take home from the video is just how exciting life on the internet is going to become.