Aggregators, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly

Another post that is imperative to write about. *sigh*

I hate feeling like I can’t keep a good idea a secret.  I feel bad that this company didn’t realize a good idea in their own product when it was staring them in the face.

So when I was at #NYTM, I saw the best thing in the world, a totally monetizable idea, made by Blip.TV.  I don’t think they realized it was their best idea.  They just made it because they saw it as a necessity for their creative customers.

It was an aggregator.  and not just any old aggregator.  It was an aggregator that actually did everything an agreggator should theoritcally be doing right this second.  It fed everything into the Blip.TV site about your TV show, from all the cool websites, social media sites, etc, and it let you respond back into all the cool websites, social media sites, etc, from the Blip.TV site.  It totally avoided the mess of where you have to look, jump, see, do, count.

It was a totally centralized service with one purpose in mind: to build a following for your show without having to become a mess and finding it all.  And it seemed like it would work.  And the reason it worked: It was task-oriented.  It wasn’t trying to be the mother of all aggregates.  We know those don’t work very well.  Instead they leave people like me biting the tips of my curls in frustration and anxiety about “Why can’t I find what I need?” and “Why won’t it work?”  By trying to solve too many problems, most aggregators end up solving none, and instead creating more.
The ideal aggregator should be a management tool, and try to manage at maximum three problems.  And all of those problems should interrelate somehow.  The ideal aggregator should not be aggregating for the sake of aggregating, or for the sake of popularity, or for the sake of labeling.  Those tools already exist.  They should solve some sort of problem that can only be resolved by having lots of information placed in front of a person where a choice has to be made quickly and easily.

Instead most agggregators makes life feel more bloated with information, some useless some not….gah.  Further, now I feel stuck not knowing what information I need right this second.  Clearly this isn’t working.  The resolution would be- stop with general aggregation, become task oriented, since we do not have the tools to create an aggregator that would work.

I’m not a genius (or at least I don’t think I am).  I just don’t understand why every aggrgator is not like this.  You have one place, it goes to this one place, and you do all of your work from your one place.  You get up, you do your stretches, and have your oolong jasmine tea, and your done.  Then you go to another aggregato, do the same, maybe have lunch.. call a friend- doesn’t this sound so much more pleasant than the current state of affairs where one actually has to search within aggregator, a very time consuming process?

The only caveat- I’m just too big a believer in generally good education.  Even the most specific of aggregators should have an override, or a ticker of sorts, so that we all know that world isn’t going to end, and what is the general deal with health care reform in the US (if you live in the US), or patent issues in the EU (if you live in the EU), or Government Scandal in China (if you live in China)…just to make the world a better place…

And Blip.TV technically has the ability to create such a product, and they could sell it for millions.  But that’s not what they are doing….Driving me batty, I say.  So do a bunch of other companies(though with a lot more work…StockTwits is one I can name off the top of my head once the next round of the Twitter API rolls out.  They could sell specialized charts based off tweets!  Technically, this is a form of aggregation, and a valuable one at that.)

I want it.  And I don’t have it.

So, umm, who wants to get it for me from Blip.TV? Or variations thereof?  So I can just check in on say- Jenny Holzer? And just her?

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