People vs Content

Since the inception of Lijit I have been thinking about people vs content. This theme comes up at Lijit all the time with regards to how to present our service to the outside world.

In the offline world people are generally people oriented. They find content, data, answers, etc.. by talking to others. Conversations with others initiate or vector the search and discovery of content.

In the online world the opposite generally occurs. Search begins with a topical query and then vectors into looking for information through a journal, blog, person.

Both end up at the same place generally, with a person/entity as the locus of the search – that ultimately leads to more and better content. The difference in the two models is more about the behavior that got each person to that point.

Lijit has the ability to provide both models and I think both thought processes are well represented at Lijit.

For instance, some are clearly people oriented with regard to content search and discovery. They want to know the people (players), their track record, what they say, and THEN the content they point to. Conversely, I'm a content-first person. I want to see a set of potentially good content, when I read something that makes sense to me within the context of my life experiences, THEN I want to read more of that content the person points to. My first checkpoint is my own internal gut check, and then the content the person points to takes on value. The difference, I think, is world validation vs personal validation. It can be a subtle difference, but I think something exists here.

This translates into the online world simplistically as:

Google is a pure content vector (no real people to speak of), relevance sucks because there is no context for the data.

Facebook is a pure people vector (no real content to speak of), relevance sucks because of the superficial nature, its like an endless cocktail party.

My current hypothesis on this is perhaps people engage information initially from one angle or the other and the existence of a world where one or the other exists is a bad approach. If we can leverage both initial behavior patterns it could be a 2+2=5.

I'm still thinking about this so any comments or thought would be interesting…