Online Personalisation - Beware online "filter bubbles"

[FirstPageResults]

Interesting vid about personalisation on the web:

As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview. Eli Pariser argues powerfully that this will ultimately prove to be bad for us and bad for democracy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s&feature=player_embedded#at=170

 

[payattention]

It makes for an interesting topic of discussion but I think he is being dramatic just for the sake of it. While some what warranted, criticising Google is THE thing to do at the moment.

The Egypt example is silly because Eli suggests the filter bubble is not created by you when the reality is the complete opposite. Google has collected months, years and in some cases, a decade of information on your search habits.

His suggestions that varied search results for the phrase "Egypt" is a bad thing is laughable. He doesn't provide any real data before pushing his agenda either.

Person A may have made searches for cheap international flights prior to searching for Egypt or booked a hotel reservation there.

Person B might have googled for related news to what was going on in that part of the world at that time.

I think it's fair to say that both results are correct and providing vanilla results could be frustrating for the end user; something Google wants to avoid doing.

It's not 1999, Google is much more than just a search engine now.

 

[FirstPageResults]

The Egypt example is silly because Eli suggests the filter bubble is not created by you when the reality is the complete opposite. Google has collected months, years and in some cases, a decade of information on your search habits.

.

Some valid points, but in fairness to him he does say:

the internet is moving very quickly, toward a world in which the internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see, but not necessarily what we need to see

and goes onto say:

your own personal unique universe of information, that you live in online, and what's in your filter bubble depends on who you are and what you do, but the thing is you don't decide what gets in, and more importantly you don't actually see what gets edited out

So he is whinging about what isn't shown, because of the personalisation

 

[Data Glasses]

Interesting to say that recently for a book i am writing i needed to search a quite a few things starting with the letter j , although strangely every time the drop down list had everything other than J

dog breeds starting with B
dog breeds starting with S
dog breeds .......etc

after a lot of searches i was fully expecting to start seeing J in the results but it never eventuated ?

however quite often sites i go to features domaining google ads

 

[johno69]

however quite often sites i go to features domaining google ads

That tends to happen when you go to a domaining site.

 

[Data Glasses]

obviously ....... i was giving a positive example after the previous comment

 

[James]

Re marketing is why you keep seeing domaining ads.

But onto the main topic personalization and social is becoming more and more evident.