In search of the endless lists of likes

I was taking a look this evening at Think Big’s series on Search from earlier this month. It was a round table on what works, what doesn’t and what’s next from the search industry’s best minds.

Having read both Freeman Dyson’s excellent review of James Gleick’s latest book “The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood” and Jeremy Dauber’s ”The Lure of Lists” before viewing the Think Big videos and I couldn’t help but think in retrospect that maybe the real reason we “Google” so much these days is simply because it feeds our endless appetite for lists.

After all there are more fluid and intuitive ways of navigating through the chaotic abundance of the web to discover a more accurate answer to our questions and yet here is a tool that can automatically generate “Top 10″ lists across an infinite number of topics… and, let’s be honest, no matter if the top answers on the list are right or wrong, in the most part we adore it.

What does all that investment in SEO tell us? It says we all want to be on top of that list.

It is self-evident that SEO isn’t about improving the quality of search on the web. It is about the quest for a better page rank. This isn’t a search industry it is a list industry. Consequently Google’s competitors have two clear choices in their efforts to disrupt Google. They can either build a better search engine or they can build a better list engine.

Moving forward if we assume that Google is today the “Mother of all lists” what happens when Facebook’s launches its endless “lists of likes”? After all both can be easily gamed… as would any solution based on creating ad-hoc lists by employing mathematics. If you know the equation it is relatively easy to manipulate the variables in your favour.

That’s why building a better list engine is a relatively mediocre achievement but building a great search engine? Now that’s something special. But be forewarned I’m not sure the world will love you if you do build it. After all who likes a smart arse?

Note: You may remember James Gleick as the man who popularised Chaos Theory. His latest book is a grand tour of how we got to where we are now with the information revolution. From the Jungle Drums of Africa to the virtual labyrinth of  Borge’s Library that is the Internet.

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Tagged: Facebook, Future of Search, Google, Ideas, Search, SEO, Six Degree of Separation

Posted in: Facebook, Google, Ideas, Search