Unbundled

How the breaking apart of traditional, rigid structures is creating a personalized, on-demand future and changing the everyday interactions of people, politics, and profit.

About this post

This post is based on a theory and a book outline I’ve been chipping away at since 2010. Since I’m probably going to be too busy to ever finish the full thing, I figured I would massively truncate and post it here so that it’s finally out in the world in some form. In the six years I’ve been thinking about this subject, it’s only become clearer with the advent of the on-demand economy, 3D printing etc. Please excuse the length!

Introduction

In Silicon Valley we’ve used the term “Unbundling” to describe the phenomena of mobile apps breaking apart into multiple separate apps, each essentially providing more focused, single purpose features. Think of the Facebook app being separated into Facebook + Messenger.

I believe this Unbundling phenomena is happening almost universally across all aspects of life. It’s a meta-trend that has been happening for decades (or more) and will continue for decades to come. It’s a common process affecting many of the things happening in the world today. In fact most of the major disruptions we see (loss of traditional jobs, failing record companies, terrorism, divorce rates, the rise of fringe/underdog political candidates etc) are all, in at least some way, connected to this fundamental transition.

See the full post on Medium

Imagine a world without Metadata. Now call it 'The mainstream...'

Recently I have observed that we, as early adopters, use an enormous amount of implicit and explicit Metadata when making feed reading decisions.

When skimming our thousands of items a day we are actually making value judgements based on who the author is, what the headline reads (and what we think the topic is based on the headline), if there are any pictures to catch our eye and so on and so on.

When we come across a blog, I think that most people look for the subscriber count and consider (at least at the back of their mind and as part of a larger value judgement) whether or not they should add the author to their subscription list based on how authoritative that number makes them. Adding someone to your feed list is a relatively big decision. So the 'subscriber count' metadata is important.

The problem though, is that mainstream users don't know this metadata. They don't know that engaget is the top gadget blog. They don't know that Chris Messina is an authority on OpenID and Microformats and they don't know what constitutes a small or large subscriber count. They also don't know about Technorati and therefore don't know how to check a blogs rank before consider the weight to place on the post.

R. Todd Stephens writes an article asking us to imagine a world without metadata. It's a fascinating prospect.

He gives the following real-world example:

"Now imagine walking into your local grocery store, and you notice all of the traditional taxonomies have been removed because product classifications are a form of metadata. The aisle signage has been removed. The only things you can see are the blank containers designed for the products themselves. Let's suppose you need soup to go with Saturday's dinner. You grab a can and begin to shake it in hopes that the weight and movement can provide you with some indication of the contents. Is it tomato soup or a can of beans? Perhaps it is a can of peaches or mixed vegetables. Or, maybe you're an experienced shopper who can distinguish between soup and other products. Is it chicken noodle soup, vegetable soup or clam chowder?"

He also talks about metadata without context using foreign travellers as an example.

"My wife and I ran across this in the Atlanta airport a few months ago when traveling overseas. A woman standing outside the train car that moved travelers from the concourse to the travel gates was having a problem understanding the metadata information that was all around her. She asked us if we knew any Spanish, to which my wife replied, "Un poquito," or just a little. She started to reel off sentence after sentence, trying to explain to us her issues. The best we could do was to hand her off to another couple that knew much more Spanish than we did. Here is the point: as a traveler, she was surrounded by all the information and metadata she needed to either get her luggage or head to the departure gate. She simply couldn't understand the information she needed to take action."

I think that mainstream users are just like foreign travellers. They lack the understanding to use all the metadata ques to filter information quickly in a flooded feed reader.

I think that if mainstream Media and business management want to reach their audience, then we need to give them a way of helping users get important content by making metadata

a. Easier to understand.
b. Collectively factored and contributory to a single Personal Relevancy rank.

The Internet: One big rolling focus group for TV execs

According to Foxnews.com (your trusted source in news - fair and ballanced, we report you decide) TV execs are using adavanced software to get focus group type data out of the online conversation!

"Using company-designed technology, BrandIntel scans "literally billions of blogs, message boards and forums" using specific key words such as an actor's name or show title, said Coristine, lead analyst for BrandIntel's media division.

(Toronto-based BrandIntel does consumer research for other industries, including automative and hospitality.)

The flood of data is filtered for relevancy and then sorted and ranked to indicate, for instance, how likely someone is to view a program or whether they like or dislike a series premise. It can be cut even finer, according to BrandIntel."

Wow. I wonder what that software is.

Imagine if the average Joe had access to it for their product, industry, brand and interests.

Added to the Megite Index

Over the last few days some new stuff has happened in relation to this blog.

First, we seem to keep appearing on the TechMeme related discussion section whenever I post about a topic that happens to be covered there. Second, someone from Megite (or an automated bot) has commented on a post and declared that we should be congratulated because we are now part of the Megite index.

Does Megite work the same way that TechMeme works?

This is how I understand it:

1. They crawl a subset of blogs (the 'A-List') and then algorithmically determine and cluster the topics they're talking about at any given time.
   
2. They look for outgoing or incoming links from those blogs to find additional discussions to link to/cluster.
   
3. They look for patterns in outgoing links (from their index of blogs 'A-list blogs') to determine which blogs are worthy enough to be added to the index.

If this is the case, does this mean we have somehow been automatically determined as a Quality/A-list Blog by the Megite engine? Should we expect to be profiled on their home page more often now?

At the risk of angering the Megite gods, who's to say that this is a worthy blog? What is the definition. Is it based on how many A-listers link to us? How many comments we get? How often we post about similar topics to A-listers? How many links we get from A-listers?

And who's to say what the A-list finds interesting is relevant to everyone - or to me.

These questions are actually more relevant for Techmeme because Megite at least has a nifty feature whereby you can upload your OPML and it starts to build a personal homepage just for you. That's a great feature.

I have also met Gabe from Techmeme and he's a great guy. He tells me he is cooking up lots of new features so I am sure it's all in the pipeline.

But I am still interested in what constitutes a worthy blog for the public 'front page'.

As for Tailrank I'm not sure if it works the same way either. Kevin has not taken the time to explain it to me. I wonder if we are in their index yet? What's the go with that Kevin!

In any case - if we are now part of a few blogs that are considered Megite worthy - thanks. If this is a normal occurrence and nothing special (maybe even some comment spam) then... I am less grateful hah.

Update: Kevin posts about the Megite comment spam issue as well. He seems to agree this might be attention getting behavior that is a little over the mark as well. I think that if it was a personal message with a personal name or even a private note via email (our contact details are not hidden) it might be a better approach.