Popularity vs Relevance

I just ‘met’ Mark Seremet and was reading his blog, which is called The Fish. This guy really has some cool concepts going on… and he is one you’ll want to keep your eye on in the coming year.

I titled this article ‘Popularity vs Relevance’ because of a topic Mark was covering in a video that discusses his newest venture: Repliqa. In this video, he makes some excellent points that I can certainly relate to – and I am sure you can as well – about how the Web 2.0 experience is all about popularity… and changes that need to be made in that structure.

To quote Mark: “discovering relevant information is frustrating and time consuming… Prioritization of information is done by popularity, tags, site formula or recommendation…”

You can see Mark’s video here. It’s an interesting viewpoint of the Web 2.0 experience, and his proposal for a solution. He talks about how the web has become all about popularity, instead of about relevance and quality. That most of the top stories on Digg are pushed to the front page by a core group of users there. That we are fed information based on other peoples votes, and having a harder and harder time finding things that are actually useful or interesting to us individually.

According to Mark, the focus is now on the content… not on the visitor.

His newest venture, Repliqa, is aiming to offer a solution. Specifically to turn the table and make the online experience all about YOU (the user). Repliqa is best described as a “personal agent” that searches out relevant information for you and creates a unique online experience for each individual person.

He compares this model to eHarmony.com, which is an online dating service that matches people based on specific criteria. Of course they are only matching people based on romantic interests, while Repliqa proposes to do this on a much larger scale – covering all types of interests and relationships. Photos, friends, videos, content, blogs, conversations, products, etc.

What this boils down to is that the internet has become complex, vast, overwhelming. The average person will never have the time or ability to make use of everything that is currently available… to any useful extent. We spend more time searching, sorting and filtering than we do actually utilizing any of the content or services.

Repliqa proposes to change all of that… by making the experience about US. By putting the focus back on the individual.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one!

Tags: mike seremet, the fish, web 2.0, repliqa, popularity, relevance, social networking, social bookmarking, myspace

Category: Internet Marketing