Finding what you want on the Internet can be an epic struggle. No matter how powerful search engines have become, there are certain instances when even your best efforts are unavailing. And the aggregation of social media on your computer can cause enough “noise” to make your head explode. Well, fret no more because The Filter, fittingly named and envisioned by professional noise maker Peter Gabriel, offers the latest solution.
The Filter was officially launched at the beginning of June 2008 after almost two years in beta and has grown into one of the largest content filtering services on the Internet. While we've seen collaborative filtering of this sort on more than a few e-commerce sites, The Filter is focusing on all levels of entertainment and promises to be the best means of discovering the latest trends. As of this writing, The Filter claims to find music, movies, TV programs, and Web videos geared toward an individual user's personal tastes better than any other service out there.
When most of us use Amazon.com to purchase a product, we can't help but take full advantage of the customer reviews that are placed there to help us make better buying decisions. The site has become a community of sorts where users can share their thoughts about the things they buy. This inevitably makes more people want to participate in the “fun,” whether it be lamenting or glorifying a product or sizing up their next purchase. And now, Amazon uses information about past acquisitions to recommend other items they think you would be interested in obtaining. Netflix is another popular service that uses collaborative filtering based on user actions and recommendations to relieve their customers of the overwhelming feeling of choice caused by a vast inventory.
In fact, Peter Gabriel explicitly wanted to create The Filter to help combat the tsunami of choice the Internet has become. He says, “the first freedom the Internet brought was the possibility of access to any content, at any time, or anywhere. Now that many of us are drowning in choice, we need good tools to help us make smart decisions.” Ultimately, The Filter will be able to provide recommendations that cross individual media types: a purchase of Fight Club will generate a recommendation for Era Vulgaris by Queens of the Stone Age.
The Filter seems to be the perfect solution to our unwavering capitalistic appetite. Now that we can spend less time sifting through what we don't want, we can spend more money on things we don't need. In the next section, I'll tell you how filtering is to social media addicts, what drive-thru is to fat people.
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