Aggregation

The vast amount of content on the Internet provides ample opportunities to become an aggregator, helping users navigate and curate consumption. 



Since the earliest days of the Web, aggregation has been seen as an important function, providing order and access to large amounts of distributed or otherwise disorganized or un-contextualized content and services. With the open nature of the Internet, aggregation is seen as not only a navigational necessity, but a means of climbing to higher positions in information hierarchies as well as in gaining commercially advantageous positions to draw users. In the post-portal era, where aggregators are less gatekeepers and more destinations, vast new catalogs of content, from raw data to video and other media, are the new fodder for aggregation.

Signals:

• Companies such as Google, which has been masterful at turning collection and analysis skills into “eyeball” aggregation, show that, even after 15-plus years of the commercial Web, successful aggregation is rewarded economically more than any other activity online.
• With the data boom of the Web 2.0 phase of Internet growth, where thousands of startups emerged to organize, curate and filter data and social media, successful businesses have been those that best aggregate information and make sense for users.
• Data visualization is important as a means of making sense of increasingly larger sets of aggregated content and information. As our use of and reliance on the Web increases, aggregation will continue to play a central role in the management of growing amounts of data, content and services.
• Microsoft, IBM and many other large and small companies have been involved in development of enterprise aggregation tools to help organizations make internal use of both internal and external content over the past decade.

Implications:

• As information on the Web continues to increase in volume from an estimated 988 exabytes today, and the user population expands well beyond 1 billion, new forms of aggregation will be necessary as basic tree-and-branch “catalogs” and other simple means of organizing and sorting fail to keep up with both the shifting nature of data and content and modes of usage. Visualization, as the current “new” approach, may give way to new forms of contextual aggregation, with sorting and presentation determined by the dynamic needs and context of the user. These techniques may be able to make use of thousands of “values” of content to sort in different ways.
• As aggregation maintains and grows its commercial value, commercial entities will continue to seek ways of capturing and organizing so-called “free” data created by the public, such as consumer-generated content.
• Innovative new means of aggregation will continue to be highly sought as a means of maintaining its commercial value.

Countertrends:

Though there are few indicators of this at present, continued commercial aggregation of publicly generated content, such as behavioral data, consumer generated content, and the increasing output of an expanding range of sensors and monitoring technologies in the environment may provoke push-back against this exploitation, with individuals seeking to “free” data from commercial aggregation, and seek direct distribution channels.

Extrapolations:

With the growth of the semantic and mobile Webs, aggregation is likely to become increasingly contextual as information and content becomes more open and freely manipulated. We may begin to see everyday things such as maps as merely an aggregation interface to show us contextual information aggregated geographically based on our particular location and needs. Likewise, content such as media could easily re-aggregate or re-sort based on the current viewer and his or her context, even within the same interface. Such dynamic aggregation is beginning to show itself in services such as Amazon.com, iTunes and Netflix, as they re-aggregate and represent content based on the last action of the user.

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