Discovery

As the page turned in to a new year and decade, the typical media outlets – both old and new — created their lists for the best and worst of each respective time period. I don’t really care for these lists, but I’ll definitely look at one or two of the. I wasn’t about to look at lists 100 items long (Complex, I’m looking at you),but I did skim a handful of lists. One of the sets I was particularly intrigued with was a set of Top 10 lists for Music in the past year.

I’ve since forgotten the website,but the lists were broken up by various categories and  it prompted me to go check out some of the acts listed on the site. In general, I’ll try and give anything a listen. I have my obviously have my musical preferences, but I try not to discriminate any genre (the keyword there is try). In fact, I was growing a bit tired of my typical hip-hop and had been dabbling in electronic and indie music (and derivates – I really don’t know the ‘boundaries’ of all of these genres) so I gave those lists a try (no downloading, I promise). I figured that the acts I chose were “Top 10″ of the year, so I couldn’t really go wrong. The outcome was great and I was pleased with what I was hearing.

Since then, I’ve been looking for similar music, largely through friends. The overall process of discovery was interesting for me. While I wasn’t actively searching for a new listening experience, these lists prompted me to give something new a try. After being satisfied with these suggestions, I went looking for a bit more. After again being satisfied with these suggestions, I looked for a bit more in places I hadn’t looked previously. The extent to my new findings was a direct consequence of how successful each of my personal listenings was. If I hadn’t liked one of the initial selections, I probably wouldn’t have have had any satisfaction at all and written off entire genres of music.

Discovery is a funny thing, especially discovery of something new that interests you. In general, I would say most people are stuck in their ways. They know their preferences and stick to them. There’s a good amount of these people who are open to finding new things, but these are generally new things within their personal boundaries. It’s not a stretch to say not a lot of people are open to broadening their interests. With that said, I also think it’s safe to say that everyone enjoys finding new information and wants to. It stimulates our mind and makes our lives more interesting. But how do people do it?

The web has been a perfect example of how this problem has been tackled by many. The advent of hypertext enabled thousands upon thousands (or millions upon millions) of web users to become information junkies overnight. For those who had to stick a virtual post-it note or a flag on their website, there was your browser’s bookmarks tool. After RSS, feed readers allowed you to aggregate feeds into a centralized point of reading. Digg, Reddit, Hacker News and other services rely on the idea that what’s popular is popular for a reason – so let’s feature it. But most of these services never tailored to the user. So what comes next? Well… Google and other services offer recommendations and customizations based on your previous viewing habits (and that’s rife with privacy issues). Some users tend to niche sites with targeted news. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is the emergence of startups whose aim is to not to simply aggregate, but act as a recommendation engine (I’m a member of a beta for one – but I forget the name right now..). These sites curate content and recommend articles and content they hope the user will like. It’s an interesting approach that users themselves have tried to do themselves. In particular, lots of Twitter users have acted as curators of their own content. They follow specific users that they like and they know will provide interesting insights and links. Based on their tweets and retweets, users can be prompted to read things from others whom they are reasonably sure will provide interesting links.

The web’s approach has articulated (in a rather mechanical fashion), various ways people try to discover. The try and go with the status quo and what’s popular, what they like, find things in niche areas, go by others’ recommendations, or try and network through various sources to get their recommendations. Discovery is something that is truly organic, and it’s extremely interesting seeing how it’s articulated as technology evolves. So many diverse approaches is reflective of the the complexity and organic nature of it all. There’s no surefire way to insure you get what you want – but do you really know what that is?