We’re only a month away from the launch of our thought networking service. On this blog, I’ve outlined our vision of thought networking as a new category of semantic applications. With thought networking, we want to help consumers effortlessly collect their thoughts and bend the Internet around them. Leading up to our launch, I want to summarize our vision for this service and our motivations for creating it.
Addressing a Pervasive Problem
The problem with today’s Internet is that it is imposed on consumers. Information is organized for them in advance, without their input. Consumers are treated not as individuals but as amorphous collections of audiences. Producers spend massive amounts of money trying to guess what their audiences need, and compensate for the gaps with monolithic websites and complicated tools to sift through it all.
A much better approach would put the horse in front of the cart, allowing individual consumers to dictate how the information should be organized for them. Simply ask them, “What are you thinking about?” and make those thoughts the organizing force behind it all. Computers could then wield these concrete representations of our thoughts to reorganize and reconstitute the information for each individual. Producers save money; consumers get the simple, made-to-order Web they deserve.