Putting It All Together - Fragemented Data and Aggregation
“The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” -Aristole
We believe aggregation and filters have an incredibly important role to play on the Internet today and in the future. There is simply too much information for any person to process. A source is needed to collect the data and people must be able to filter it based on their preferences.
Fred Wilson, on AVC.com, articulates why aggregators are important:
“There is no way that anyone can consume all of the content that is available and relevant to them. And no media property, be it the Wall Street Journal or any other content creator, can produce even 5% of the best content I want to consume daily.”Below, I will expand on this idea by describing Craigslist and Hapnin.
Reverse Aggretators
In the very near future, I’ll be in the market to find a new apartment. (If you live in NYC, you can image how fun this is.) As a person looking for apartments, I want a single source that will show me ALL the available apartments in NYC. Then, I want to be able to filter, based on my preferences and budget.
Others feel the same way, in fact there is so much demand for this service that people pay to list their apartments on Craigslist. This is an example of “reverse” aggregation. Cragslist doesn’t go out and find apartments, but it allows others to post. For a user, you can see far more apartments on Craigslist than if you went to individual real estate websites.
Regular Aggretaors
Here at Hapnin, we are working on a different idea. Hapnin.com will be a “regular” aggregator. We’re going to find events, list them and link back to the source. Google is by far the most popular company that does this.
It’s good to know there’s a happy hour at BoA at 7pm. But, it’s better to be able to see all the happy hours going on in the city and then filtering by time and location. This is a new and exciting way to connect with your surroundings.
With aggregation and filtration, the whole is by far greater than the sum of it’s parts.
Greg
