It happens more often than I'd like. I'm talking to a friend and getting an update on his life, when he hits me with, "Haven't you been reading all the stuff I've posted on Facebook?" And the truth is, through no fault of my own, I haven’t. I still check Facebook semi-regularly, but he hasn't appeared on my wall in months, despite being a close friend. And for whatever reason, I haven't noticed – and I have EdgeRank to thank.
There's been plenty of talk around Facebook's EdgeRank formula, deciding who appears and doesn't appear on our wall. Google has a similar filter in place, separating the wheat from the chaff in our search results – rather, separating what they guess we'll consider wheat versus chaff. These algorithmic filters show up everywhere now, from our social networks to our Netflix cue, and even the online newspapers we read.
Eli Pariser, once executive director and now board president of MoveOn.org, noticed a world of difference in search results he was getting when he compared them with his friends. While Googling "Egypt" served his friend only travel links, Pariser was served mostly political links. (Pariser guesses that Google uses
57 signals to filter search results.)
So he came up with the term "filter bubble" – your personal universe of information online, tailored specifically to you. Your browsing behavior creates it, but you can't decide on what gets in or is edited out. As Google's Eric Schmidt put it, "It will be very hard for people to watch or consume something that has not in some sense been tailored to them."
Clearly, there are issues with an algorithm delivering all of the content you're exposed to online. For one, because they pay attention to all those compulsive clicks you make on links like "Top Ten Kittens In Raincoats" it can throw off your balanced information diet - and you end up surrounded by information junk food. More importantly, these algorithmic gatekeepers now function as our automated curators, choosing what we read – and being robotic, they lack journalistic ethics. They’re programmed to feed us information that we like – not media that challenges us or pushes us out of our comfort zone. Not content that has points of view we're not used to or don't subscribe to.
This has interesting implications on editorial strategy for brands who act as curators. Brand curation often means bringing back human filters – editors and content strategists selecting a mix of content that best engages your audience. As algorithms continue deciding our daily information diet, curated content will continue to grow more valuable, lending an idiosyncratic, human touch to a process that is becoming entirely automated. Brands that can “think outside the algorithm” with a thoughtful mix of content aimed at their target have the chance to provide something their audience isn’t able to find elsewhere.
On the other side of the coin, filter bubbles make earned media more of a challenge for brands. Having a million Facebook fans doesn’t mean your brand’s posts are showing up on one million walls – only fans who interact with your brand regularly see your brand’s content. If your brand has an overtly liberal brand voice, your brand’s conservative audience might not be finding them in their search results.
Ultimately, brands will have to find ways to “burst” their audience’s filter bubble. As Pariser states in his
NY Times Op-Ed piece, “It is in our collective interest to ensure that the Internet lives up to its potential as a revolutionary connective medium. This won’t happen if we’re all sealed off in our own personalized online worlds.”
[I posted this on Big Spaceship's Think Blog yesterday – comment here, please.]
I'm a Senior Strategist for digital creative agency Big Spaceship, leading strategy for a number of clients including Skittles and Crayola. I wrote and produced the virtual world documentary Second Skin and am the managing editor for the pop culture blog Popten.
