Ahhh, if it were only that easy, I'd be so rich right now that Bill Gates would be my secretary, and Sergey Brin (left one) and Larry Page (right one, watch the laces!) would be shining my shoes.
And if it worked that flawlessly, you'd already know I am posting about Predictive Software, the next stage in the online search business. You'd have also already bought the book. And the t-shirt. And attended my speech on the subject.
In a fascinating piece in Fortune, Jeffrey M. O'Brien profiles a handful of companies--like Slide, WhatToRent, and my old fave Pandora--that are making great strides in the coming up with the next "next big thing," namely the programs and applications that will "get to know you better than you know yourself" and make piles o' cash by recommending you products and services you really want.
And in doing so, he shoves another gold certificate into my rapidly thickening Vindication File. Says Jeffrey:
"The web...is leaving the era of search and entering one of discovery. What's the difference?
Search is what you do when you're looking for something.
Discovery is when something wonderful that you didn't even know existed...finds you."
Fortune's dictum echoes what I said in my very first post here. Wanna succeed in business? Then give people what they don't expect!
How important is this? Well, take a cold shower or two to soften the hyperbole, but O'Brien goes onto say that the optimum personalized discovery mechanism "could change not just marketing, but all of commerce."
This isn't just a Pow!, it's a 21-gun salute.
I knew it all along. The future belongs to Surprise.
And by now, if the algorithm worked, you should already know it, too.
