photo credit: Lazurite

Here is another ‘ah-ha’ moment for me.  Again, it was something that I always knew, but the importance of it became even more glaringly obvious.

I was reading a ReadWriteWeb post from back in September on Personalization.  To make their point, they quote Ken Fromm as saying,

“The Internet is shifting from discrete units of websites and Web pages to discrete units of information [...] organized in ways that are relevant and personal to each individual, using data gleaned from social graphs as well as recommendation and personalization services that allow users to set their preferences.”

Much of our focus is on sharing data.  To do that we want to create web pages and portals – the vehicles of web information. But that is seen from the creator side of the pond.  Look at the consumer side: I want information to come to me. And only on topics I find interesting. I want to follow the streams of interesting people and learn from them. I want to share information that I find useful. And I want it in one place, if possible.  But if not, I want to control where they come to and what it looks like. (Notice the number of ‘I’s.)

We all know about RSS, about Twitter and FriendFeed applications that pull in streams of information.  None of this is new. What is new is that we, as providers, need to focus on that instead of how to get the information out there.  Personally, I care only this much about where it is and in what form.  As long as I can a) quickly find it or the experts,  b) have it ‘delivered’ to me in the way I want to see it and c) be able to collaborate on it, I don’t care where it originated.  It could come from X and as long as I can collaborate on it in Y, that is fine with me (but let me define Y).

So the focus is even less on the site (how to share the information) and much more on enabling those in an organization to create their own personalized way of receiving shared information. Yet it is SO easy to fall in the trap.

Yet, the main problem is that most people are accustomed to the ‘web site’ mentality and will default to that to get and share information.  Our job is to first provide a way for them to personalize information transactions and second, to help them understand that the personalization they want is there and how to use it to their advantage.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

WHY #10: Finds Information

Social Learning FINDS what you are looking for.  Or at least helps you find how to find.

What are the most common ways to find information? Did you notice that I did not say “search for information?”  This is because searching is only one way to find information.

The four major ways to find info are:

• Search
• Hierarchy
• Tag (Machine is using us)
• Personalization

Search is the most use.  Probably because it is most common and we are used to that.  But it may not be the most effective. How many times have we searched on Google and found a whole bunch of results that have the term(s) we wanted but didn’t have anything to do with what we wanted?  All too many times.

Hierarchy is good, but it is limited. For example, I may be able to save a document in a folder on my hard drive.  Oh, but wait.  It could also live in another folder.  And another.  It realistically live in all three.  Which do I put it in?  And when I go to find it next time, will I remember where it lived?  Yet it is another effective way to organize information.  A director of IT mentioned to me that one time he searched his network folders – which were not really THAT huge – and found 15 separate versions of the same document all with different information. Now, which one was the correct version?  Which was most up to date?

Tagging gives subjects to a bit of information rather than trying to pigeon-hole it into on label (which is what a hierarchy does).  For the best video on this, see  Information R/evolution.

The Personalization was pioneered by Amazon.  It can ‘see’ what you are looking for and give you suggestions on similar pieces of information. The system does the work for you.  Also, it can help you find others who might know what you are looking for.  Many times what you want is not in a system but in someone’s head.  The system will connect you with that person.