What is the ‘Filter Bubble’?
Well, its the term used to describe the behaviour of many top web search services and web sites to ‘Personalise’ your experience and the information presented to you.
Google, Facebook and many others now use a range of factors to assess the relevance of the results and commercial suggestions they present to you. The results and content you see can be very different to those seen by others for the same subject search.
Every year, thousands of entrepreneurs, change-makers, innovators and scientists gather in Long Beach, California for TED, the world’s leading thought conference. In 2011, the audience included executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many other Silicon Valley startups.
Eli Pariser explained the filter bubble concept and then called on them from the main stage to change how they do business, it wasn’t at all clear how they’d react…
DuckDuckGo
One new search engine gaining popularity is www.duckduckgo.com. DuckDuckGo is operated by one individual, but is attracting some attention in the geek world.
Not least because of its fanatical support for the privacy of its users. There’s a great explanation of how Google tracks your use of the Internet and how Google filters your results and experiences on the web.