When it comes to finding things on the internet it's both a marvel and a pain at the same time. Sometimes you never find what you want and sometimes you find things that you never imagined finding, or in some cases, never ever wanted to find. *shudder*
Alongside all the mainstream albums and movies you commonly find you often come across odd little gems that you've never heard about. For example, I had never heard about the bands Stabilizer or Captain Dan & his Scurvy crew if they hadn't been linked at a site I frequently visit. The list can really go on for everyone. We've all expanded our tastes in music and movies thanks to different little things we've found on the Internet.
These little niches of things are what Chris Anderson calls The Long Tail, and these niches have expanded beyond their old limits and almost into mainstream. But there lies the risk too. When the niche hits mainstream it has stopped becoming a niche, doesn't it lose its attraction? For isn't it the part about it being a niche that makes it so attractive to watch/listen to? The sense that you belong into that small group of people that like the niche and when that goes mainstream the feeling of sharing something rare goes lost since everyone starts to like it. So what's the point of liking it when all of a sudden everyone does? The sense of camaraderie goes lost when the fan base explodes into thousands of people expressing the same love of what you liked. With all the availability of material and the rapid mainstreaming of niches the problem in the future with the Long Tail is that it might become obsolete as the tail becomes shorter and shorter. It won't disappear since a lot of new niches keep on developing all the time. But as new niches become even more mainstream its viability may become less important as a whole.
Finding the right thing on the Internet can be a pain. No matter how many parameters you add to the search it still doesn't turn up the things you were looking for. The solution to this is to change the web content into something that can be expressed in a natural language, but this would also ease the way software agent's process information to quickly handle queries. This is what researchers call a Semantic Web and it is supposed to be the future of the Web.
But is it a feasible thing to do? Is it actually possible to convert the rigid structure of the Internet into something more free flowing to allow an easier search of what you need? Especially for something as large as the Internet. While at the same time it would speed up the time you spend looking for things on the Internet, is it all that feasible to pull off? And at the same time try to retain public privacy, as advertising and such can get extremely specialized than it is today and the meaning of spam mail could probably change as well. At the same time though it would help you gain access to information at very rapid pace. This probably in turn could lead to information overload if the software agent's aren't made to handle this and provide the information in an organized and simplistic way. The idea of a Semantic Web has its promises and drawbacks but it could in the end probably be a good thing for us all. When it comes that is. And by the current outlooks it's a bit far away for it to be able to change the entire Internet. So we'll be stuck with the good ole search methods for a while. So don't start thinking it's gone yet.
