Seth Godin asks: Should human-powered search abandon the Long Tail?

My friend Seth Godin, CEO of human-powered search engine Squidoo, has been reading the press on the search debate between huge range and high quality and wonders if the Long Tail has something to say about it. Along with Squidoo, human-powered search companies include Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, Barnes & Noble's Quamut, the New York Times' About.com, as well as HubPages and many others who are aiming to use a "less is more" approach to competing with Google.

In a sense, they're all proudly leaving the long tail to algorithmic search and seeking success by relentlessly editing down to a human-edited short head. They argue that the search engines reward them for such relentlessly paring down and filtering (they're all at least partly search engine arbitrage plays).  And better search results ought to attract better page creators as well...

Seth's question: does this make sense?

My answer:

I'll answer, as I always do, with slogans half-remembered from Econ 101 ;-)

"Every abundance creates a new scarcity"

For instance:

• An abundance of information can create a scarcity of context
• An abundance of choice can create a scarcity of advice
• An abundance of content can create a scarcity of time
• An abundance of people competing for your attention can create a scarcity of reputational ways to choose among them.

In the old model, distribution bottlenecks made most of those choices for us--we could only watch what was on and buy what was on the shelf. Now, in a Long Tail world, everything gets out there--choice is abundant. This creates an opportunity for new and better filters to navigate that choice (Chapter 7 of my book!), which I would argue describes the examples below. 

How do you compete with the Long Tail? One way is by making the short head more attractive. So when Borders goes from 100,000 books to 80,000 books but turns twice as many of them cover-out on the shelf, they're competing with the Long Tail by making it easier to browse and search and discover new books in a physical setting--doing what a physical store and do best. 

So in short, there's a market for both. As I've said many times, the Long Tail doesn't kill the blockbuster, it just kills the monopoly of the blockbuster. And the same is true in reverse: Google's Long Tail success creates demand for more curated search. One size doesn't fit all.

But if you edit the range of entries down too much, are you really a search company anymore? Or are you just a collection of semi-random pages of human-created content, hoping to be noticed (and rewarded with traffic) by real search companies? If it's the latter, you risk getting it wrong on which pages to focus on, and thus losing out to Google's whole-web agnosticm. If so, you're just like every other web media company, trying to anticipate demand and otherwise stand out in a crowded marketplace. Which is fine. Just don't call it "search".

Comments

[Galen H. Brown]

I think it may be a mistake to put Squidoo and Mahalo in the same group as About.com and Quamut. None of them are pure "search" tools, they're more like searchable aggregators, or perhaps searchable groupings of aggregators. Since they're all aggregating Long Tail content, they all function as part of the Long Tail ecosystem, but Squidoo and Mahalo are built on the Long Tail of subject expertise whereas About and Quamut are based on Short Head expertise. This bottom up versus top down aggregation seems to me to be a very significant distinction, especially in light of your final sentence--the top down approach relies on anticipating demand, but the bottom up approach measures something much more like actual demand.

[Uncle Kenny]

"They argue that the search engines reward them for such relentlessly pairing down ... "

You mean "paring" down.

[John Troyer]

They are the new encyclopedias.

[Phil]

Scarcity versus abundance seems to be the crux of the problem of search in a matrix of virtually infinite data sets. If it's true that value has an indirect relationship with abundance and a direct relationship with scarcity then searchers of value are essentially seeking out scarcity. And if it's the primary task of a search product to result scarcity (whether via fleshy computer or silicon chip) then successful search tools would be those that could somehow identify (or tag) the scarce targets.

Semantic technology would probably be a part of new search solutions. Artificial intelligence would be another component. Google indirectly already uses human brains to filter abundance from scarcity since PageRank depends on human link-action. It's far from perfect of course. But if Google or some other entity is able to develop algorithms that can build profiles of users that are built into the process, then we would be closer to the goal of squeezing out scarce context, advice, time and reputation from abundant information, choice, content and attention.

In the end, search is about meaning. And since meaning is ultimately relational, there seems to be an abundance of opportunity among the infinite relationships evolving on the inter-relationship machine we call the web. The opportunities abound; our vision is what's scare.

[Nathan Bowers]

I just don't get "human powered" search. Harnessing crowd wisdom with Google algorithms and Digg voting I understand. Opening Wikipedia to anyone and letting consensus emerge I understand.

But what is Mahalo? Is it a news aggregator? Is it Digg? Is it TV ("Vote on our new spokes-idol!")?

Seth Godin's writing is brilliant, but Squidoo leaves me cold. It says it's like Wikipedia but it looks like a bunch of affiliate ads. Am I trusting a crowd or is this page by somebody trying to sell me something?

What Wikipedia, social news sites, and search algorithms have going for them is a clarity of purpose that fosters trust.

[Nathan Zeldes]

I never quite stopped longing for totally raw, unadulterated, boolean search of the entire web. It's hard to argue with Google's modest degree of processing of our queries - they really do a superb job - but having humans outguess what I really mean to search for does leave me worried... Of course, as long as both models are available, that's OK with me.

[Iarfhlaith Kelly]

"An abundance of people competing for your attention can create a scarcity of reputational ways to choose among them."

Surely this means there's a need for a new tool to rank people in the same way Google ranks web pages? It could be a kind of respect-o-meter. The higher the number, the more respect you had in the community and the more important your opinion was considered to be.

They could call it personrank!

[George Lew]

"An abundance of people competing for your attention can create a scarcity of reputational ways to choose among them." and/vs "An abundance of choice can create a scarcity of advice"

After all, we need to concern human factors in buying/searching behavior. Decision maker and influencer etc.

People won't just buy a thing because it just happen to be there. Consider this: I just dropping by (shopping), a promoter introduce a coffee brewer to me,I test it and buy it. that's why: "Squidoo looks like a bunch of affiliate ads. , Nathan Bowers" (Internet Marketers like to use it.)

Instead of Searching, I would say that Squidoo kind of portals are influencer/adviser. Thus arose the 'reputation' issue, who has the power to judge other website? It just work like Open Directory Project with some fancy functions on it. (Open Directory Project is dead, for me).

Therefore, I agree with Chris, they are not Search Engine Company. For me, they are company with search engine function in it only. They live after Search Engine (to support the scarcity in Search Engine, act as an adviser to user); but never can replace Search Engine (Google, Yahoo etc).

[Henri Weijo]

Great post.

I argued in a post of mine that an abundance of choice also creates a scarcity for authenticity.

http://www.facade.fi/?p=58

[Hillary]

I love the return to human powered searching - that's called asking a Librarian. We've been doing that for a long time, technology is just a tool for our work, the best tools being experience and the ability to ask the right next question.

[Hykan]

Seth Godin's writing is brilliant, but Squidoo leaves me cold. It says it's like Wikipedia but it looks ilan
like a bunch of affiliate ads. Am I trusting a crowd or is this page by somebody trying to sell me something?

[curious_george]

Please tell me how the Long Tail manifests in/affects/can be seen in third-world and developing countries.

[Bryan]

I despise the human powered search. It completely defeats the purpose of search and it adds teh biases of the "editor." I think it is strictly a play to suck some advertising arbitrage out of the billions of internet revenue flowing down the stream.

Bryan

[منتدى]

They argue that the search engines reward them for such relentlessly pairing down ... "

You mean "paring" down.!!!

[anthony]

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