A Friday Question: Do We Need Platformism?

This idea is sure to rile some people up.  We are all familiar with the concepts of other "isms" where we are judged based solely on looks, race, physical appearance or some other subjective measure.  Sexism, Racism, Elitism ... these are things no one likes, and most educated people know these are wrong.  The issue many people have with blog measurement tools at the moment is that they apply the same unilateral notion of equality to all blogs and URLs.  Blogs done on Typepad are searched the same as those done on LiveJournal.  Dotcom URLs are weighted the same as DotInfo URLs.  what if this weren't so equal?  What if having a dotcom URL actually meant your site would be taken more seriously?  What if standard searches for corporate brand mentions excluded sites on more personal platforms such as Livejournal, Vox or Blogger?  Judging blogs without understanding their content is what algorithms are made to do - yet the problem with most is that they simply take terms that are mentioned and offer back jumbled results.  Just go to Blogpulse and type in any brand name you can think of, look at the search results and you will see what I mean.  In a world where URLs and platforms mattered more, a choice of platform to use would be based on reputation more than price or any other factor.  Would it be good or bad to live in a world like that?  What do you think?

Comments

[giles rhys jones]

i guess the whole point of the internet is the democratisation of information and comment. you no longer need to be a big brand with oodles of cash to get your point across by monopolising access to the audience. how do you judge authority by buying tv slots or .com urls? currently the relevancy and validity of your message is decided by the people. beautiful.

[Rohit]

Unfortunately, it sometimes seems the relevancy and validity is actually decided by the algorithm - at least in terms of filtering content for people to consume. In a world of the almighty algorithm, the necessity for people to add meaning to raw results will become even more important. In the meantime, people will most probably continue to find ways to "hack" the algorithm with ideas such as URL filtering or other less than perfect methods.