Do people search?
In the era of viral content, RSS feeds and social bookmarking do people search any more?
Information and new content is so pervasive and is being created at an ever-increasing rate do peopIe have any time to search? In an environment where 'newer' is often seen as 'better' Users are enjoying the relative luxury of having targeted content, that they have chosen, delivered to their desktops through technologies such as RSS news feeds and podcasts.
Social bookmarking and selection sites present third party content arranged in a natural, almost evolutionary, way. Popular content bubbles up to the top of the pile and by being there is presented more often. This works in a similar way to the way your favourite mug is always at the front of the cub-hoard or shirt at the front of the wardrobe. Should content be displayed using a simple ranking mechanism to control positioning?
How many links to short pieces of video content are followed from email recommendations from trusted sources (although with the amount of money spent on 'viral marketing' through email and actors being paid to strike up conversations with strangers on the streets and trains about products these become less trusted)? The content has been selected and is in your in-box waiting for you to make the decision to view it.
Looking at the search statistics for some of Watershed previous and current projects would suggest that search is not a high priority for must users:
- 0.34% of requests were search requests for Electric December during December 2005
- 0.60% of requests to watershed.co.uk are search requests
- 0.21% of requests to dShed/Digitised are search requests
Pre-set searches, or showcases, may be useful to users and to us to promote old content from the archive alongside newer content, such as "recently added short films" or "gay and lesbian animation". These smart searches could be initiated by administrative staff or users of the site.
Does an archive have the values it once had? An archive's value may lie simply in it's URI: a location for trusted new content.
Lots of the structure to hold and display content has been over-specified for past projects and we want to make sure functionality will be used before devoting engineering resources to it.