SpectatorBytes

At Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg’s D8 conference a couple of months back, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, stated that one of Facebook’s objectives was to “rethink the web stack around people.” This statement echoed the thoughts I shared in a recent post concerning the way social networks are poised to change all types of digital experiences over the next few years. In this posting, I will expand a bit on the implications of this transformation from a “site-centric” Web to a “people-centric” Web in the area of content.

Today, content experiences are built around a link-based architecture, in that links are aggregated to create static channels. Relevancy of a specific link is determined by how it relates to other links or analyzing the metadata used to describe that link. Generally, sites are designed to act as a holistic product rather than a modular one, although sites have certainly become more modular as they optimize themselves for search engines.

However, the overall product is designed to be controlled by the publisher rather than the users. Users’ ability to impact the way most sites package content has been primarily through click-through activity. User comments to a certain extent introduce user participation but that is probably where users’ involvement stops.

So, what would a content site designed with people as its primary focus offer?

The following list outlines changes to the content experience that I think we’ll see as a people-centric Web becomes increasingly dominant:

1. From Sites to Profiles Networks: Social profiles are built around elements, which invite engagement (sharing, commenting, liking) while websites are mainly designed to invite consumption (page views). Profiles are optimized to establish virtual connections with users (follow/add) while sites are optimized for users to find via a search engine or get there “organically” (i.e., type the URL). Profiles will be optimized to deliver highly tailored content on specific entities (individuals, places, businesses, locations) rather than overall categories. Compare this to sites’ architectures, which are optimized for driving browsing around a category.

2. Channels to Streams: Social networks have established a powerful paradigm to consume content as news or content “streams”. This phenomenon is has proven to be a highly efficient way to consume content. Social networks have trained mainstream consumers to use this “construct” to easily access, aggregate, manage and consume information about people, things, and topics. This means that content experiences should be optimized for this construct — i.e., content providers should increasingly optimize their content to flow inside streams.

3. From Homepages to Stream Readers: Given the above evolution, homepages become less important as entry points into a content site. Users are more likely to interact with the content a “network” makes available through individual profiles. This shift implies that user navigations tools need to be deployed at the profile level rather than simply relying on “back button to Home” as the primary navigation paradigm for users. It also implies that users (which can now act as editors) are more likely to design their own homepages by using next-generation reading tools (e.g., Flipboard, Pulse, etc.).

4. From Articles to Authors: People follow other people or topics or things. They do not follow “articles.” This evolution requires changes in design, which leverage entities (people, topics, places, companies) as a way to allow users to establish relationships with specific pieces of content. This implies that any one article is a component of a highly tailored feed to which a user can easily subscribe. Experiences will emphasize building relationships with content sources rather than getting their users to consume articles or individual pieces of content. Success in the People’s Web relies on active “subscription relationships” rather than consumption volume alone.

5. From Comments to Communities:  Content providers will focus on strengthening the loyalty and engagement of their subscribers. This involves fostering the creation of communities among their users. Content providers will increasingly resort to “game-dynamics” systems to reward their most active users with social recognition and create among these users a sense of social obligation that will keep them coming back.

6. From “Subject-Related” to “People-Recommended”: In the People’s Web, users will rely more heavily on social graphs (whether it is symmetric like Facebook’s or assymetric like Twitter’s) to filter and discover new content. Like with music playlists, users will be increasingly interested in exploring other people’s content “streams” as a way to identify new content entities with whom to subscribe.

7. From SEO (search engine optimization) to Virality: Content creators will need to find new ways to promote their content to users. They will likely borrow techniques used by social application and game developers to increase the virality of their content experiences as well as to retain their subscribers/followers. I predict that focus will shift from optimizing to appear in search results when consumers “pull” for data to “push” for data via “stream” and notifications.

Many content providers have already begun to adjust to these changes. Twitter has certainly emerged as a catalyst for change. However, we are in the early stages of the emergence of this new paradigm and thus the change in content experiences has just begun.