Joshua Schachter

Browse versus search is a radical increase in the trust we put in link infrastructure, and in the degree of power derived from that link structure.

It's all dependent on human context. This is what we're starting to see with del.icio.us, with Flickr, with systems that are allowing for and aggregating tags. The signal benefit of these systems is that they don't recreate the structured, hierarchical categorization so often forced onto us by our physical systems. Instead, we're dealing with a sig... See more

This approach was not without its challenges, of course. Decentralized networks create a discovery problem, where you can’t find information if you don’t know where to look. The maturation process of Web 1.0 involved the development of tools and practices for information discovery: search engines, knowledge repositories, purpose-built forums, and s... See more

-This is part of what makes early internet innovation so rapid- it was built on open protocols that devs knew wouldnt change

If you’re building a technology platform, making it “social” really means figuring out what the nodes, edges, and jumping functions should be. One way to do this is to work backwards. What should the experience feel like at scale? Do users care about what other people are doing on the network, or do they really care about other types of objects, li... See more