Back before we all went to big box stores to fulfill just about every need (material and otherwise) we trundled a few blocks away to a corner grocery, hardware store, or butchers’ to pick up our consumables. Growing up as I did in Vancouver, my mother used to haul me every few days to Vancouver’s Chinatown where we’d waltz into the world-famous Dollar Meats. What does Dollar Meats have to do with Relevance Engines? I’m afraid I’ll need some more of your time to explain.

Over the years, the staff there came to know my mother and I, and would offer me all manner of BBQ pork and other delicacies which I have long since absorbed into my regular diet. The woman behind the counter, despite her poor English and the frenetic pace in the store, always knew what my mother wanted and often recommended other interesting flavors and offered samples. She knew us, she always was friendly, and she always gave my mom new ideas for her cooking without being too pushy. Despite their generally abrupt speaking style, visiting the staff at Dollar Meats felt less like an errand than it did a weekly adventure.

As I was growing up, though, the world was already changing. It became harder and harder to find the sort of small-town, old-world service one used to get at the corner shop, and the conversations between merchant and customer were increasingly limited to “cash or charge?” and “paper or plastic?”. Shops like Dollar Meats are whimsical cast-aways from a time when marketing meant a smile and some good ideas, a free sample here or there, or simply a well-timed “special”.

In the online world, folks like you and me consume information voraciously, but none of the sites we ever visit particularly endeavour to know anything about us — despite the fact that they’re already tracking sessions, asking us to login, and storing cookies on our machines. That state of them not knowing me rarely changes for the better, even though I might visit many times a month.

Shopping and buying online often entails a huge amount of pursuit to get the relevant information, involving much searching and clicking and site-hopping and back-tracking (thank goodness for tabbed browsing). Rather than attempting to solve this, many have attempted to further muddy this water with services like Froogle (since renamed) and C|Net Shopper which simply create more informationally-devoid inventory of things for me to click on, research, and (on the odd occasion) purchase.

When a site does attempt to get me to buy something unexpected (as happens way too often) it’s usually in the form of a banner ad for something I just couldn’t possibly have any interest in. Sure, it has something to do with whatever I’m reading, but it has no knowledge of ME and who I am, what I like, etc. You can take a wild stab at who I am by making some presumptions about what I’m reading and where I’m accessing the page from (by my IP address) but that’s about it… and it’s probably more often wrong than not. Imagine if you had a search engine that worked that well — would you use it?

You do every day. Content matching engines are the heart of what generates the search results you get when you fire up Google. They’re also what drive the engines that place advertising in search results, or drop them on to blogs and web sites when you surf. They’re attempting to match the ads to you — in your opinion, is it working?

I didn’t think so. Lots of publishers are disappointed with AdSense, Google’s program that inserts ads on third-party sites. While Google purposefully avoids disclosing numbers to the public, last April The Economist revealed that while AdWords (ads inserted on search) contributes 60% of Google’s Gross Profit Margin, AdSense accounts for only 10-20% of Google’s profit margin. Given the proliferation of AdSense, this is likely despite a far greater number of AdSense impressions than AdWords impressions. This has led many to believe that Google’s AdSense program is vulnerable.

This also represents an enormous inefficiency for consumers and advertisers alike: we see stuff that we would rather not be looking at, and advertisers manage ineffectual programs and pay for errant clicks. It leaves advertisers (and advertising networks like Google) more vulnerable to Click Fraud, which is now up to 28% according to some.

An answer to this was supposed to be Facebook’s Beacon. On the surface, using social network-borne information to help advertisers target their [potential] customers better seems like a great idea — if you’re an advertiser. Unfortunately, though, poor Mark Zuckerberg got so caught up in solving the big targeting problem for the ad industry that he forgot about making his case to the little guy. What’s more, they ran roughshod over delicate little issues such as user privacy, by publishing a user’s purchase of a diamond engagement ring from Overstock.com on his Facebook News Feed and thus rather spoiling his intent.

The fact of the matter is, though, that I would like to see more stuff that is intended for me… and by that I mean me, specifically. The trade-off I’d be willing to make is that I would expect to see fewer ads overall. The suggestion that I’d make as both a Marketer and a Consumer is that these “ads” would be more useful and successful if they were less interrupt-driven and more embedded into the flow of my daily e-meanderings. In a roundabout way, I’m suggesting that what we need to reinvent is what Brendon Wilson (whom I believe has coined the phrase in this context) the “Friendly Shopkeeper“.

I don’t want to shop. I don’t have time… it’s a frivolous activity endowed with few pleasures. I also am concerned about ideas and information that might be out there that would interest me and broaden my understanding, and that I am likely missing. Shopping is more than just buying things… it’s the act of seeking out things. I am an innately curious person, and this needn’t stop, however I am also challenged for time.

Ultimately, I need a Valet that, like the woman at Dollar Meats, is entrusted with an understanding of me and my tastes and habits; can make an honest assessment of whether or not an idea, object, or event is of interest to me; and will make some effort to get the good stuff in front of my gaze. That Valet must also be smart enough to throw things at me that actually broaden my horizons, since if they do too good of a job restricting and filtering things, I’ll never really learn anything new or shift my opinion on anything.

For me, trust will be given to this Valet based on three factors: its accuracy, frequency (the degree to which it is interrupt-driven), and privacy (its understanding of my need for discretion).

:: Privacy

What’s scary for me as a user is that my Valet knows a lot about me — some of which can be very damaging to my reputation, financial or social status, and for some people even their family lives. I’d like to be able to take all of this access back whenever I want to and erase my Valet’s memory, but that being said I think that addressing peoples’ concerns around Privacy is not the hard part.

I honestly believe that our Personal Privacy is an issue which we consumers tend to ignore until there has been some heinous abuse or breach of our data — and it takes very little for us to forget all about our concern. In the US, Americans generally supported the Patriot Act — which allows the government to snoop on them, detain them without trial, and/or pretty much do whatever it likes for whatever reason — simply because they were pissed off about 9/11. Enormous breaches of our personal data by credit card clearing houses, retailers, and financial institutions are a daily occurrence without so much as a whimper from consumer advocacy groups.

And for what it’s worth, I firmly believe that Facebook Beacon’s launch could have been hugely successful had they been smart enough to position it properly, and thoughtful enough to consider the issues around negative-option publication of off-site trackers (which contravenes the discretion rule in rather fine style). but I forgive them their naivety. As a strong believer in corporate responsibility, I believe that trust between consumers and the companies they entreat with their business is a long-term issue and that ultimately, being a good citizen is to every company’s benefit. I’m willing to give Facebook an enormous Mulligan on this one, even though they still don’t get it.

:: Accuracy

According to my own definition above a Valet is, in essence, a publisher. As such, and like any Publisher from the New York Times to a Search Engine, I have an expectation of efficacy that is rather intrinsic to my continued subscription to that source of information. In this specific case, though, the accuracy of which I speak is a correspondence to my tastes and interests, wants and needs, whims and wonderings.

Today’s content matching (read: Search) engines are indeed pretty good at taking a term I enter into a text area and finding a bunch of things that, through the filter of third-party references and a few other tricks, at least proximate to what I was looking for. Because it’s on a simple web page I’m able to easily do the really hard work of picking the specific object from within the list of results that I’m looking for — or to refine my search based on all of the errant results returned. Internet Search Engines are still (in their storied 13-year history) evolving along this path.

But this technology isn’t good enough for my Valet. If you were having dinner with Claudia Schiffer or Ghandi and your Valet kept barging in with updates on new things he thought you would want to know, but which in your opinion were completely irrelevant — how long would you employ his services?

First of all, the traditional search engine doesn’t know anything about me. If it did, it would understand me as Ian Bell, Technology Entrepreneur and not Ian Bell, Cricketer. Knowing me is a pretty good jumping-off point in building an understanding of what I’m likely interested in. From there it’s a hop skip & jump to making direct matches, no?

Um, no. From there, an engine needs to gather all kinds of data about what you’re doing, what you’re looking at and responding to, and perhaps even what your friends are doing. And this brings me back around to why my social network is important to the Friendly Shopkeeper:

• First, people generally say a heck of a lot about what their interests and hobbies, likes and dislikes are via social networks. They join groups (communities of interest), talk about things with their friends, and enter their favourite bands, books, and movies into their profiles. This is a wellspring of useful data for the sharp-minded Valet.
• Second, we say who our friends are. This can be a useful tool as well for the Valet who knows how to use it, but the smart Valet needs to understand which of my friends I actually have similar tastes to — which friends I influence and which ones influence me, across the categories that express my taste in things like movies, books, etc.

Right now, a lot of this stuff is out there in the network, but resides in different fiefdoms. Most of those fiefdoms at the moment have Billion$ of reasons not to talk to one another, which is a shame. This is a gap that perhaps OpenID, OpenSocial, or Social Network Portability will address (in my view these are all different moons circling the same globe).

:: Frequency

How my Valet gets to me is at least as important as how often, and differing contexts call for different methods. If he knocks on my door to tell me that George Bush is still a Miserable Failure, well I’d have to agree but I likely could latch on to that meme the next time I checked it with him (the Valet, not Dubya). It’s relevant to my world view but has been prioritized inappropriately. Because my Valet knows me, it knows things about when I’m available and what I’m doing; and because he knows all the different ways I communicate he knows which one is appropriate to the occasion and to the object he wants me to know about.

As with the case where the Valet abuses the privilege of this unfettered access by throwing me the wrong stuff, doing it in the manner I least prefer is just as much of a turn-off and jeopardizes our relationship. Therefore, the intelligent valet knows when to be seen and not heard, and when to pull the fire alarm to get my attention.

Google actually approaches nuances of the above three functions to some degree, but for a number of reasons they haven’t gone far enough in personalizing the data (content and advertising) that they deliver to me. I believe that there are some natural barriers to going as far as they should, and I believe quite strongly that today’s Search Engines rather ham-fistedly fill a shrinking void in helping us shape and evolve our own knowledge, tastes, and interests. While it’s a healthy business, ultimately I believe that many of the ways in which we use search engines today will be replaced: why should you search for things when you can find them instead?

This of course extends from recurring or prospective searches to the news we read to purchases. At Something Simpler we are moving in small ways to augment and ultimately enhance peoples’ experience with the information and ideas they consume on a daily basis. Whether you choose to call us a Relevance Engine, a Content Filter, a Friendly Shopkeeper, a data Valet, a Recommendation Engine, or a Prospective Search tool our goal is to allow people to simply read less and know more. And while making people more efficient is important, our parallel goal is to allow for the joy of the sense of discovery and the continued expansion of our understanding that Serendipity brings.

That’s why we’re here.