Power of the mass.

With applications and websites like Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, Yahoo Answers, and the famous Twitter it looks rather obvious that the new trend today is to leverage the power of the masses to produce (more or less) meaning.

Today, I am pretty sure that I can find the goals of Yesterday's European Cup Match on Youtube. I'm also confident in getting an answer to a basic question from Yahoo Answers. And I believe that Twitter will tell me more about my host company's website being down than any newspaper at the very moment it happens.

Power of the mass.

But what about going back to the interest of the sole user? Wouldn't it be great to be able to know what does M. X is interested in? Of course we would have to respect privacy but I believe that this is one step necessary to make applications more intuitive, more intelligent, capable of pushing content (and not only ads) that are relevant considering my current interest.

How can you tell what one is thinking about? Through his action. Searching is showing what you are looking for. Reading is telling what you like. Writing is saying what you think.

Then, we would be able to apply this to groups of people. Does the interest of a group result from the sum of the interest of its members? I don't think so, and that's the challenge.