Wouldn’t people find them dull and constraining—or get impatient clicking through a structure? Why not just allow visitors to freeform-type in the kind of content they’d like to see?
Unfortunately, this wouldn’t be feasible on a practical level. It couldn’t generate the kinds of well-structured performance metrics needed to ensure that the best content is presented first, and the curator who brings the most value to the public makes the most money.
But would this be the end of the world?
Where is it written that categories have to be dull? Standard ones we see everywhere (like Sports, Health & Fitness, Business, Politics, and Relationships) might not prick up many ears, but here are some samples of categories and their subcategories that have already been used in a proof-of-concept website:
Content
with an
Attitude
Quirky
and Proud of
It
Challenges
to
Existing Beliefs
Tests
of Whether
You Snort When You Laugh
Comics
for (Mostly)
Thinking People
Things
That Seemed
Like a Good Idea at the Time
Things
Nice People Don’t Laugh At
Content
by Often-Nonstandard
Subject
Under-Remarked
Trends, Developments & Issues
Technology
&
Science for Normal Humanoids
God,
Philosophy
& the Ineffable
Glimpses into the
World’s Workings
samples
of
actual
online content:
“Secret
Fears of
the Super-Rich”
“Sex and the
Married Man”
“Boeing’s
Plastic
Planes”
What’s the likelihood that a user would think to enter any of these terms into a conventional search box?
Even if they did, what are the odds anything interesting would appear in the results?
The main lesson here: structured search categories are only boring when boring people put boring characteristics into them.
