#76: Content for searching and engagement

💎 Word gems

Reddit Should Drop Everything to Work on Search (Every / Som Mohapatra)

The phenomenon of Google’s decreasing search quality because of SEO marketing is real, but to say Google search is dying as this article puts it is premature.

What I do think this article highlights is Reddit’s most inherent value: sub-communities that are moderated by people. Reddit’s model as a social platform to me seems the most viable. Where other platforms collapse under a context-less feed, the subreddits follow humans natural behavior of forming into groups.

But the article misses why Reddit’s search has been so historically bad - its content is fundamentally not designed for searching, and changing that changes what makes Reddit fundamentally Reddit.

There is a lack of trust that the results provided by the search engine are the best results for the user, instead of for the highest bidder or trickiest gamifier. The search engine's goals are no longer aligned—if they ever were—with the querier’s. Users are turning towards Reddit because it's easier to trust.

Why is it easier to trust Reddit than other places on the internet? One key reason is the hostility of both the platform and its community members to corporate engagement. Reddit is for Redditors, not companies who want to sell to Redditors. And we like it that way, of course.

The Rise of the Millionaire LinkedIn Influencer (Vice / Maxwell Strachan)

This article describes the very worst aspect of social media: the optimization for repeat engagement creates a race to the bottom. We end up with garbage like this where people share content when they have nothing (of value) to say.

To maximize his engagement, Oluwole also used a LinkedIn-focused analytics application called Shield to analyze which of his posts performed best. Then, Oluwole would recycle the old posts or create “three, four different posts talking about it a different way.” This provided value to his newer followers even when he was feeling uninspired. “Some days I don't have anything to say. But it doesn't mean that this audience doesn't have anything to hear,” he said. To date, his content has now been viewed 80 million times, he said, adding: “If you looked at how much that would cost on Facebook or Instagram, it's a million dollars easy.”

IKEA’s Crimes Against Cartography (London Reconnections / Long Branch Mike)

If you were to get a CX team to design a ‘customer-first’ layout of an IKEA store you’d get a straight line, and a completely forgettable experience. It’s the reason why I’m skeptical of the idealistic “customer experience” rhetoric. IKEA’s store layouts are as much their brand as they are a smart business decision.

As shoppers are taken through every department and past every product, many of them stop to take a gander, slowing the procession. This maximises the turbulence to provide each shopper with more time to engage with the goods.

As such, a store map is not really needed, and this is what most shoppers experience. They are happy to trudge the road of commerce. Typically the long walk through both levels takes at least an hour, and often one or two more, depending on the aisle crowding and the amount they purchase.

💩 Cool shit

Are You Press Worthy? - Calculate how much press you’re worth if you went missing. The aim of the site is to expose this media bias and the number really sticks with you.

SuperTunnel Simulator - If you were to dig a tunnel directly beneath you through the Earth, do you know where you’d end up? Use this to find out.

Flight Guesser - This is hard. See a flight on a map and guess the origin and destination airports.

Ultimate Nokia Ringtone Collection - What the title says, for your nostalgia needs.

Coastal Risk Screening Tool - An interactive map showing the impact of climate change on rising sea levels. As someone who grew up by the coast this is startling.

Pocketverse - Create an incredible, generative WebGL universe in your browser.

The Infinite Conversation - An incredible AI-generated never ending conversation between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek.

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