Personalisation, Profiles & Policy

Having covered day one of the SearchLove conference in my previous post I thought I’d best get round to writing up day 2 and explaining why MC hammer is actually the saviour of SEO*; however, having reviewed my notes I felt that some of the topics covered in day 2 actually deserved their own post so I will be covering a different topic/presentation in the following posts.

Ciaran Norris was the first to speak on day two and started by referencing an article he’d seen on the BBC news where a woman was complaining about Gmail; her account had been hacked and her complaint centred on the fact it had taken numerous days for Google to do anything about it and actually return her phone calls. My initial reaction was certainly one of surprise? A major company like Google didn’t return her phone calls?... but then, how much did she actually pay for her account?  It reminded me a of a situation where a friend had added a ridiculous made up middle name to here Facebook account and ended up with her account suspended; it took almost 2 weeks for her account to be reinstated after a slap on the wrists for breaking Facebook rules. The fact is if you aren’t paying for the service, then you are the product being sold; it’s perhaps an obvious point, but it certainly made me appreciate all the quality free services I use on the web.

Ciaran led on to analyse the free Social Media services we take advantage of in this day and age. He argued that these “echo chambers” are gradually becoming increasingly personalised to unhealthy levels; they allows us to only see the things we want to see. Humanity is built on discovery and extreme personalisation can prevent this. To some degree Facebook adverts are so tailored to users that they are almost considered word of mouth; as well as adverts, if you see a picture a of a friend next to a product, subconsciously it becomes a personal recommendation

He went on to argue that we need exposure to the unknown to be able to grow and extreme personalisation can prevent this. The point of extreme personalisation was somewhat backed up by a Mark Zuckerburg quote

“A squirrel dying in our back yard is more interesting to us than a person dying in Africa”

It’s a scary and sickening thought, but I can understand why he said it even if I abhor the thought that he’s right. The fact is, people don’t want things that challenge their beliefs and these social media echo chambers provide a safe online place in which to exist online. Often what people want and what they need are two entirely different things.

Although Ciarans presentation was excellent and very well delivered at Searchlove, I did find some of the views expressed a little extreme. However I think this was his intention; to show us the way that these “echo chambers” are progressing rather than exactly how they are now.

*In case you did actually read my last post, MC Hammer is to launch his own search engine called  WireDoo next year …you can find out more information here at Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2119342/MC-Hammer-Launching-Deep-Search-Engine-WireDoo) for which there was quite a bit of excitement at the SearchLove conference…with Martin McDonald going so far as to proclaim him “the saviour of SEO”.

Exciting times in search marketing!

Adam