A while back, Kevin and I (along with our pal Greg Rogan, now of Expat Teaching Recruitment, a kick-ass recruitment agency focusing on the placement of qualified teachers and trainers with top international companies) were transitioning from our last startup, CampusWord, when we began speaking about the potential for a smarter, more efficient way to find and consume the information we want and need everyday. As we discussed the possibilities for our relatively vague "smart system" (enter our other partner Greg Gomer), we came up with a few ideas of what this system should be able to do:
Search for information for us even if we're not looking.
As Google announced earlier in the year, they have identified over a trillion unique URLs online and the number is climbing quickly. With so much valuable information available, we could sit around searching all day and still not find every piece of content or information out there that would be valuable to us... so we need a system to do it for us.
Deliver information without having to be asked.
Brad Feld, Co-founder and Managing Director of the Foundry Group, explained this best in a recent blog post, "In 20 years, I expect we will snicker at the idea of having to go search for information...typing the same stuff into little boxes over and over again." Basically, no one can possibly know what to search for all the time and we believe that to receive information, a user shouldn't have to continually ask the system for it... it should just be there for us whenever we want.
Understands the unique nature of every person's information needs and adapts as these needs change over time.
Why should you and I see the same search results when we enter the same keyword phrase? Why should any two people see the same results ever? Why should you even see the same search results today for the same term you searched yesterday? You shouldn't! Because after all, information is absolutely unique and infinitely dynamic. Think about it... absolutely unique - meaning no person "computes" any piece of information exactly the same as another person. Infinitely dynamic - meaning at no point in time will your information needs be exactly the same as they were a moment ago (or at any other time for that matter), nor will you "compute" a piece of information exactly the same as you did at another time, nor will your information needs be exactly the same at any time... follow my drift? In brief, the system needs to know each unique individual user and grow with them.
I think I have gone deep enough for our first blog post here. Our team will continue to describe different parts of our vision for Pinyadda here and we look forward to receiving your feedback! Till next time...
