Re-Organizing the World’s Information: Why We Need More Boutique… — Mirror

But here too, relevance depends on the sociology of the current moment. For example, on Behance, the online creative community, school and location are featured prominently as filters, implying that where you live and where you went to school is an important indicator of the quality of your design portfolio. In a world where talent is being decoupl... See more

Unlike vertical search aggregators, boutique search engines feel less like yellow pages, and more like texting your friends to ask for a recommendation. They have constrained supply, which is the foundation for their biggest moat - trust. Importantly, boutique search engines introduce new business models that don’t rely on advertising.

we need more Boutique Search Engines

I believe the opportunity in search is not to attack Google head-on with a massive, one size fits all horizontal aggregator, but instead to build boutique search engines that index, curate, and organize things in new ways.

Curators, Curators

It has become popular to say we live in the information age, and we need curation to help us sort through the mess. But thus far, the conversation around “curation” has been too focused on the content and not enough on the structure. We seem to have accepted the job of the curator as providing a product review, a list of links, a... See more

There are tens of thousands of people sharing insights on a long-tail of topics, but their content is buried in the deep corners of the interwebs, found only by chance, and consumed in fleeting social media feeds that strip context and discourage reflection.

If you want to know what the smartest people have to say about the future of fandom, there i... See more

For most queries, Google search is pretty underwhelming these days. Google is great at answering questions with an objective answer, like “# of billionaires in the world” or “What is the population of Iceland”. It’s pretty bad at answering questions that require judgment and context like “What do NFT collectors think about NFTs?”.

Vertical Search Aggregators

Google is a great example of how the internet enabled scale and speed: every page on the web returned in an instant. But increasingly, we’re seeing this scale is at odds with a fundamental human need: relevance. Someone who wants to find the best freelance designer, or the best sushi restaurant, or the best NFT to buy wi... See more

There is no search architecture that will work universally across all categories. It’s hard to imagine you wanting the same UX to search for recipes than to search for freelancers. Whereas Google’s product begins and ends with a search bar, trading off functionality for simplicity, vertical search players like Yelp, Expedia, Zillow, and Behance eme... See more