blog.pubexchange.com
I also like knowing what is going on in the world in general, not just in the niche of what I already know and am. What a concept! And for example "I wonder what is #1 on [search engine] for [random word]" is a question that cannot be answered meaningfully in a fully personalized web.
I imagine it would be a huge boon for the psyops crowd (includes marketing if you ask me) though: what better setup to fuck with people, than when no two people ever see the same? And skinner boxes also are much more effective when you don't see what is happening in other boxes I'm sure.
When I read "What if all 89 voices said the same thing?" I thought I understood the thrust of the article; that overpersonalisation creates an echo chamber devoid of the dissent and reflective views that allow people to make their own minds up and that therefore overpersonalization has insidious potential.
I was dismayed to find that "What if all 89 voices said the same thing?" was seemingly being asked as if the answer was obviously "Oh God yes where do I sign up" (and I do understand that their target audience would likely reply as such).
I highly doubt that the 89 domains that people visit in a month each cover different topics. I'd bet that there is a high cross-over and the user is visiting them to read about what they have to say on a topic.
Now, stepping backward from that ideal to the present, what steps could we take to reach that goal?
From my experience, site editors don't want to compromise on their opinions, nor spend the time it would take to make multiple suggestions. It's a tough nut. Would love to know if any companies out there are addressing that problem and what the response has been from publishers.
Assume that users (readers) have access to much larger streams of content, from heterogeneous sources, than they have attention for. And that each user's stream is unique in content and may overlap with those of other users differently for every other user. So the editor of a personalised web site provides not multiple alternative content but a single filter which can be applied to each user's stream to surface related content from that user's own stream(s).