--- title: "What Is The Data Matrix? Machines and Humans Coexist" date: 2005-02-18 author: "Richard MacManus" categories: - name: "ReadWriteWeb" url: "/category/readwriteweb.md" tags: - name: "2005" url: "/tag/2005.md" --- # What Is The Data Matrix? Machines and Humans Coexist [Andrew Nachison from The Media Centre](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://mediacenter.blogs.com/morph/2005/02/beyond_winners_.html) raises some interesting issues regarding RSS content aggregation. He boils it down to these 3 questions: ## 1. Machines vs. humans? \[in regards to aggregation\] I agree with Andrew’s conclusion: “This isn’t an “either/or” theory but a “both/and” reality.” P.S. also check out [The Media Center Matrix](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.mediacenter.org/content/4804.cfm). [Rich Skrenta from Topix.net](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://blog.topix.net/archives/000066.html) has a similar view: “For comprehensiveness, algorithmic techniques will have to come into play. People-powered systems just don’t scale to the long tail.” I too think there’s a middle ground to machine and human/social aggregation. Currently I think we’re probably nearing the peak of human/social feed aggregation, in percentage terms. What I mean by that is that the average blogger/reader probably subscribes to 80-90% human feeds and 10-20% machine feeds – and most of the latter would be egofeeds from the likes of PubSub, Technorati, Feedster (sometimes egofeeds of [other people](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://susanmernit.blogspot.com/2005/02/subscribing-to-egofeeds.html) :-). So topic and tag RSS feeds are at a very early stage of adoption – companies like [PubSub](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.pubsub.com/), [Findory](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://findory.com/) and [Topix](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.topix.net/) are leading the way. From now on in, machine aggregation can really only increase its percentage of [attention](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.technorati.com/tag/attention.xml) – while human feeds will decrease. But don’t worry, because it’s not a zero sum game. Aggregation as a market will continue to increase at a great rate. Even though the ratio of human-to-machine feeds will [even up](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://napsterization.org/stories/archives/000400.html) in the coming years, the whole pie will grow significantly. ## 2. Who profits from the exploding digital datastream? [Andrew says](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://mediacenter.blogs.com/morph/2005/02/beyond_winners_.html) that “traditional media companies” have in the past “derived enormous profit” from controlling information. But fragmenting audience is quickly moving that control to content aggregators – he specifically cites Google and Yahoo. The search and aggregation companies are set to profit. And provided a click-through is still required to access full content, niche publishers should also profit too. One thing to watch is the [brewing controversy](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://calacanis.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000293032225/) (or *browsting* controversy in that case!) over full-content aggregation, which some companies are already attempting to profit from. I wonder also about [excerpted content aggregation](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002656.php), or remixes of content – because the boundaries will surely be pushed in those areas too. ## 3. Who controls the datastream itself? Andrew doesn’t write much about number 3, so I’ll take a punt at it. The control of content is in one sense moving very definitely towards the consumer, or reader (neither term seems to fit in this age of the read/write web!). This is something I’ve been [exploring](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002402.php)[over](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002626.php) the past months and which continues to fascinate me. RSS Aggregators and topic/tag feeds are two technologies that in a very real sense give power back to the user. *I* choose (by subscribing) what content flows into my Aggregator. *I* choose which of a million niche topics to track by RSS. However as Andrew points out in his post, Google and Yahoo – and apps like Bloglines – are the main tools now for accessing the datastream. Their influence over the datastream is increasingly important – you can see evidence of this in Google’s [highly profitable](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508060515/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4227967.stm) advertising business. *Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_is_the_dat.php))*