LIFT07: Jaewoong Lee looks "post-Google"

Running notes from the LIFT07 conference in Geneva.

Jaewoong Lee is the founder of Daum in Korea, one of Asia's largest Internet platforms. He talks about the human brain as a metaphor, where neurons work individually but also collectively. "This was my vision for building systems that allow people to work together and create meaningful things". Then he talks about the history of media: from one-to-one to mass communication to "mass to mass", and now Google: "is there something after Google?" His answer is yes. When he first typed LIFT into Google, out came as first result the site of the London International Festival Theatre (the ranking has changed in the meantime). So "providing information based on keywords may not be enough"; there is too much of it, time is limited, quality still needs to be verified. For Jaewoong, user-generated content and collaborative content-filtering is a possible "post-Google": more users means more content means more qualified content means the opening up of lots of niche content (Long Tail).

Which creates a new problem: most user-generated content is not consumed, it becomes like a social debris. So we maybe need to have some function that acts as a layer between users. Some kind of content aggregators that can filter content; "community gardeners" taking care of the community; ways to better filter information; mass participation and collaborative filtering. Despite the general perception, not everybody can Google in a smart/effective way. Not everyone can write a Wikipedia entry, or create a YouTube video. There is a divide in creation and information retrieval. We have to figure out the services and functionalities, the layers that are simple and functional and can help groups to create and retrieve -- a sort of "meta web2.0 services". "This will be the true mass market".