Participatory Culture and Human Search

I’m a huge Mahalo supporter (as you know) and what i like about people-powered search is how relevant the search results are. For many people Google and Yahoo results are overwhelming – social search feels like you get what you need – it’s immediate – and that the results have been cherry-picked for you.

This is what absolutely kills me about the music industry. There’s so much untapped potential for opening up social media as sales channels. I should be able to share and post any song I want, but instead the industry is still stuck in 90s era thinking that if music is shared, sales are lost, not gained. I have a feeling in 5 years we’ll be in a much different place but for now it’s still frustrating.

There simply aren’t enough humans to make human powered search scale even remotely well.

What will eventually make things more or less well is machine powered search that continually adapts to human input – this is the essence of Orion, the algorithm that Google bought from a New Zealand grad student about 18 months ago.

Here’s how it works. It tracks your behavior.

Let’s say you look up Chris Brogan in Google. You go to result 1. You come back, hit 2. 3, 4, 5, until you hit 6 and leave and don’t come back for that query again.

Orion says – huh, he must have found what he was looking for at #6. Let’s give that a little more juice.

Orion also defeats to some extent the gaming of results unless you have a MASSIVE botnet at your disposal.

Thanks for sharing. These men are great musicians. The interview was well done and enjoyable.

Gustavo Dudamel of Venezuela described as flamboyant, passionate and young was on 60 minutes last night. He says the young people in Venezuela are encouraged to participate in bands. The music binds them together and keeps the kids out of trouble.

Maybe music is the magic we all look for.

Chris!

Thank you for highlighting our conversation, and you are very on point in sharing how twitter ad other venues may be used for communication. However, the main point is that both parties have to be open, receptive and patient with one another.

There is so much untapped talent in the world and I commend you for sharing Zoe Keating with me. I immediately bought her live album from emusic.com and have enjoyed it. I plan to explore more of her music.

I have found http://www.last.fm to be a wonderful forum to share music knowledge with individuals worldwide. I am very impressed with everyone I meet there because I learn something new everyday.

If you have an account or do not have one, please consider setting one up to explore and share your love of music! If you do, add me: http://www.last.fm/user/2Serenity

Thank you again for enjoying Nuttin’ But Stringz for I found them one day while playing on myspace. I was elated to see that they are being featured in a local commercial here in New York for NY1 cable.

Enjoy your week!

These guys are awesome. I saw them the other night for the first time on Amercia’s Got Talent. I usually don’t watch that show but when I heard these two I was really glad I did. I thought other people might enjoy their music as well so I put together a page at http://nuttingbutstringz.net to help promote their music.

However, the main point is that both parties have to be open, receptive and patient with one another.