Comments on: How we created a metadata profile

By: Renier

Renier — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:44:54 +0000

Right, that’s it.

By: Wilbert

Wilbert — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 08:19:34 +0000

I think you’re both right. We don’t like personalized content. We like the non intrusive ‘you might like’ personalization, but we don’t like a fully personalized service.

I like the recommendations Amazon makes. I don’t like a bookstore filled with only the books that Amazon thinks I should read.

It also frightens us, there is this computer that knows who you are based on your prior behavior. Even when this computer is right (there will be a time a computer can probably think up your next step) we are still frightened by it. Too much personalization takes away the feeling of freedom.

The signal to noise ratio, what we like is somewhere in the middle.

By: Inge

Inge — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:47:14 +0000

Good point by Renier. Same goes for the personalized Google-results. I don’t want to read what Google thinks that I want to read; I want to discover what is out there, independent of who I am.

Thing is that the more personalized content the become, the less possible is the chance to discover something completely new. I stumbled upon tens of interesting artists by just trying them. If I would only follow my Last.fm advices, I would keep running in the same musical circle.

There’s a beautiful paradox here: we want to get (out of the endless mass of information) relevant content, but we also want to know what’s out there (independent of what we personally consider relevant, since this scope will be too limited).

By: Wilbert

Wilbert — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 04:59:51 +0000

Are we not always connecting to like minded? It’s in the human nature :)

By: Renier

Renier — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:31:49 +0000

I also see the danger of communities becoming too boring this way. I mean if you’re only connected to likeminded…
But maybe this ain’t true because for now I’m only experiencing advantages of tags and social networks in general.