Every day a massive amount of video is added to the internet. At it’s current growth rate it may even flood cyberspace and create a massive blob of information without any structure. How can we find our way in this modern jungle of sounds and images? In our 19th lab-talk Ynze van Houten, presented an overview of his research into the process of finding relevant video content on the internet.

The quest for finding relevant video may provide a window on a much wider issue; how do we find valuable information without segmentation provided by experts? In traditional broadcasting models we rely on the opinion of journalists to segment information. Without the help of these authorities where do we go? Do we find new strategies or do we fall back to prehistoric behavior? What’s the missing link on the internet?

So it’s a cyberjungle of information out there and we seem to rely on our most primitive survival strategies. Ynze van Houten presents a new metaphor for browsing this overwhelming amount of information. Forget the images, forget the sound, we go back to scent. Only 18% of the internet searches is query based, 82% is based o browsing. Browsing seems to relate to a natural way of interacting with an environment. Are we browsing or are we foraging the web?

When browsing we seem to have same behavior as animals looking for food. We don’t have a clear goal, more a general direction and were easy distracted by what we meet. Our behavior is similar to animals; we follow a trail by picking up scent but will easily change in a different direction if we stumble upon something with a more appealing scent. In general people seem interested in fragments of information in video and have to decide weather a video at some point will provide what they need.

This research provides a set of metaphors to look at trends on content and points in a clear direction; it does not provide a clear toolbox for handling video search behavior. Additional research may give a broader view on human browsing behavior and will be beneficial to all organizations offering digital content.

Comments

Daniel Laskewitz on 22 April 2009 at 16:42

Interesting story. As long as the people can find something they like it’s okay, isn’t it?  I must admit: I’m also browsing for video’s most of the times. Unless somebody told me about a video.

Anyway, I would like to read more about this research.

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