Finding the Best of the Best

Image via CrunchBase

The common theme in all of my messages is my search for the best, which incidentally, seems to be the latest goal of the media industry: searching for the best. Or rather, the best (method of) searching.

Looking back on the transformation of search engines-- from Yahoo to Ask Jeeves to Google-- I think that the search agencies of the future will only be better. Our access to information and news, it seems, will be more intuitive and second-nature. Although I know nothing about the technology behind it, I anticipate a search agency that is more in tune with our thoughts than even we know.

Already, different media industries are capitalizing on the search engine. Companies like Google have branded their ability to out-search other engines by the virtue that they allow searchers to find information with the most ease, thanks to an involved matrix of keywords and popular hits.

Other media industries have followed suit. For instance, Amazon has involved the search engine in their website in order to encourage more purchases. After buying a German dictionary for class, Amazon kindly told me that people who bought my dictionary also bough X, Y, and Z. Of course, I then considered buying those books as well.

I think the latest trend (and the most profitable one) in searchability is the anticipation of what the consumer wants. What else would make the consumer happy? What else suits the needs of the consumer? Like Amazon, companies like TiVo and iTunes can offer suggestions about new television shows or albums that might suit the consumer, based on past recordings or purchases. Even Garmin, the GPS system, can make suggestions to the consumer based on location and pricerange and cuisine.

It almost seems scary that gadgets and electronics know more about us than we do. This makes me think that this phenomenon is less about the consumer's power, but rather the market's understanding of the consumer. A significant difference, and one that should not be disregarded. The market might be more focused on the consumer's needs, but that does not mean that it is a consumer's market.

As for the future of searching? I think it's going to be even more in-depth and more in-touch with the consumer than it is now. No, I don't think mind-reading is in all likelihood, but I'm sure that the next wave of search agencies will complement the ideas of John Battelle's Database of Intentions:

"The Database of Intentions is simply this: The aggregate results of every search ever entered, every result list ever tendered, and every path taken as a result. It lives in many places, but three or four places in particular hold a massive amount of this data (ie MSN, Google, and Yahoo). This information represents, in aggregate form, a place holder for the intentions of humankind - a massive database of desires, needs, wants, and likes that can be discovered, supoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited to all sorts of ends. Such a beast has never before existed in the history of culture, but is almost guaranteed to grow exponentially from this day forward. This artifact can tell us extraordinary things about who we are and what we want as a culture. And it has the potential to be abused in equally extraordinary fashion."