Just-for-you content: what it is and why it’s not for me.
Have you seen what’s on Facebook today?
Dumb question. Of course you haven’t. Or at least you haven’t seen the Facebook that I’m talking about. You’ve seen your version, and that’s almost certainly very different to my one.
Not so long ago, the media was the media was the media.
When season one of Outrageous Fortune came out, it came out at the same time for everyone, and everyone who wanted to watch an episode saw it on the same night and talked about it the next day.
Movies opened at theatres across the country on the same weekend. The TV news came on at 6, and the newspaper arrived in your letterbox the next morning.
When the Internet arrived, it behaved in much the same way.
If you went to a news site, you’d see the lead story the editor had picked – just like you would have in the print edition. And if I went there I’d see the same.
Today, the lead story might change several times in an hour, sometimes based on what’s happening around the world, but just as likely on which stories are getting the most clicks. Some US news sites are tailoring homepage content to the user.
Over in movie land, we’re seeing titles pop up on our streaming services based on what we’ve watched in the past and any of our other online behaviour the platform might know about. So while your Netflix might be heavy on kittens, my YouTube might over-index on aeroplanes.
So far, so either convenient or boringly self-affirming, depending on your point of view.
Imagine this conversation, though, a year or a month in the future:
“Did you watch Outrageous Fortune 7 last night?”
“Sure – that was some pretty raunchy stuff (cat growl noise).”
“Wait… are we talking about the same episode? The one with all the classic 70s car action?”
You know where this is heading.
Before long, the content itself will be curated. Not just which content we see, but how it’s put together.
So if the platform knows you’re interested in sexual content, you’ll receive a just-for-you cut of Outrageous Fortune that lingers on the saucy bits. And if you’re really into V8s, your just-for-you version will be heavy on the Falcons and Commodores.
The story will be more or less the same; you’ll see the same characters in the same places, only with the bits you like dialled up and the bits you don’t dialled down. Just for you.
Like any technology, there will be completely helpful and benign ways to use this. In a news context, it should be pretty easy to understand the reading ability and intelligence of a user. So why not tailor the word choice and sentence structure of a news story (whether written or via audio) to exactly match someone’s reading level (assuming meaning could be preserved)?
Or perhaps I’ve shown – or just come out and told the website – that I’m trying to improve my Te Reo. Using more kupu Māori in amongst the English would suit me nicely.
Conversely, if I was just a tiny bit racist, leaving it out completely would keep me on site longer, giving me even more time to soak up the sponsors’ messages.
As an ad guy, anything that does that makes sense. Clients want eyeballs, and eyeballs like seeing what they’ve always seen – or at least new stuff based on what they’re comfortable with.
None of this is happening just yet – as far as I know. But none of it’s impossible. All it will take is more processing power and a financial model that makes it worth doing. Processing costs have only ever trended one way, so my pick is that a future filled with just-for-you content is inevitable.
As someone who takes pleasure in creativity, it’s not a future I’m looking forward to. I want a kaleidoscope, not a mirror.
I want to read news I’m not looking for, see films about stuff I’d never thought of and read books that baffle me.
And when I’ve done those things I want to sit on the couch with a glass of wine with someone who’s read or seen some of the same things I have, and spend more time talking about them than we did watching them.