Noise And Failure On The Internet

There is too much to see online for most people, and too many ways to receive information. Worse, when people go looking for data they need, their quests fail three times out of ten.

Outsell Inc's Information Industry report. But as Internet usage has increased, so have the roadblocks to finding relevant information. It's not as though money to fund better technology has not been flowing in to the likes of Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. All three are part of a Search, Aggregation and Syndication sector that Outsell values at $68 billion in revenue by 2009. Yet with plenty of smart people working hard to improve search and information retrieval technology, even the mightiest of the mighty in search may have hit a plateau. Part of the problem could be what old-time Usenet users referred to as the Around the lead-lined writers' room at Murdok, we call 13 hours on the Net a "slow day." But for other people that represents more than a quarter of the customary 40-hour work week. If an average of 31 percent of that time is wasted looking for information, that is three hours a week people are being paid to swear at their monitors. There have been plenty of attempts to blast through the clutter. In talking with the inestimable Gary Price from Attensa, a maker of syndication feed-related software and appliances, has brought the phrase "river of news" into the conversation. Like Ask.com, they focus on identifying what is likely the most important bit of information a given person wants at a particular time. In search, the presence of affiliate and comparison links can be as much a bother as a help to people searching for product information. It reached a point for Oliver Humpage that drove him to distraction with Google, and he launched Del.icio.us | Digg | Yahoo! My Web | Furl Bookmark Murdok: David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.