Perhaps the finest (and most undervalued) sports metaphor for business I have come across.

Match Sprint: 6 strategic minutes resolving in 30 physical, success-defining seconds — proving that it takes a fine balance of ingenuity and dexterity to surpass the competition.

There’s no doubt that the biggest development in the web ecosystem throughout the past 5 years has been social media, and specifically, peer to peer communication channels.

But while the focus has been on these CHANNELS, I’d argue that what is more important in the modern digital landscape is CONTENT. While to the novice user Twitter and Facebook appear to be text-only distribution engines (tweets and status updates are textual stanzas after all), their power lies in transmedia aggregation. As both platforms modify their platforms to allow for in-line content display, it becomes more apparent that copy is becoming less important. Video, graphics, web-apps, long-form articles, games, audio and the like are the content wrappers of today.

Further, as Facebook and Twitter feeds become more saturated with content, these channels are losing their hold as the most useful content distribution and consumption platforms. For every 15 links I click on, only 3 or so are of any interest to me. There is, however, a solution to this epidemic. Enter the age of the discovery engine.

There are three types of discovery engines:

1. Thematic Aggregators
2. Social Bookmarking Aggregators
3. Algorithmic Taste Profile Engines

The thematic aggregators are largely emanating from the Tumblr blogging platform. Instead of distributing content from a single authored source (like New York Times, Pitchfork or ABC.com), there are digital properties that aggregate from a multitude of sources with similar subject matter (and typically cut the useless junk).

Devour.com: one of my favorite video suggestion engines.

Social bookmarking channels like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious and Digg have been around for years but have recently begun to pick up steam within the mainstream social sphere. While not typically thematically driven, these platforms aggregate peer-reviewed and rated content and are segmented by semantic tags and descriptions.

StumbleUpon’s Interest Engine

Perhaps my favorite of the three, algorithmic taste profile engines got their mainstream start thanks to the smart engineers (like my friend Andreas Weigend) at Amazon.com. The modern discovery engine was born after the scientists realized that I, the user, might be interested in knowing what those in my social circle liked or bought. Equally useful outside of the e-commerce vertical, these algorithmic engines are driving content discovery and consumption now more than ever. YouTube suggests videos I’d like; Pandora offers up personalized music playlists that would appeal to me; even Netflix has developed their platform with a discovery engine value-add. Instead of being a simple video distribution service, they have constructed a mathematical algorithm that suggests movies and TV shows based on A) what the user has consumed in the past, and B) what the user has liked or disliked in the past. (See their Netflix Prize initiative for an even more in depth look at their discovery engine and efforts to continue enhancing it.)

The gold-standard of recommendation engines, Netflix.

Discovery engines hold both consumer and business value — and are driving the future of content distribution, consumption and monetization. I predict we’ll be seeing social media channels partner up with or construct proprietary discovery engines to allow for a better, more personalized user experience. But why stop there?

«artist unknown»

Wow. I’ve never had a geo-social experience quite like this one. Please, I invite you to join me on my recent trip to New England. 2,000+ miles of travel compressed into a 2 minute virtual tour of my Gowalla check-ins.

This really is cool stuff. Make a Foursquare or Gowalla mashup of your own using Tripline.

Thanks to Steve Dubner’s New York Times Freakonomics column this week, I discovered this hilarious and agreeable diatribe by vlogger John Green. In the video, Green offers up a plethora of reasons why the penny (and the nickel) should be abolished…

After watching, I’m converted. I just don’t understand why a tangible object holds a value of 1/5th of what it’s worth. And what costs a penny these days? I think the going rate for a Tootsie Roll is up to 8¢.

 Ahhh economics; ahhh America.

Liked Google Instant? You gotta check this one out… A fresh way to discover content; no frills, no wait, no boredom.

And if these two web apps weren’t enough, check out Google Maps Instant, Google Images Instant and Etsy Instant. Key takeaway from all of these: 2011 will be the year for real-time, intelligent search results.

One of my big branded entertainment projects of the year, Jeep’s first iPhone app TripCast, is featured in an ad in USA Today today!

Digital content analyst & strategist Barrett Garese’s diatribe against contemporary entertainment studios, producers & distributers:

I think that the vast majority of online content creators are simply content with making shorter, cheaper versions of already established media – short TV, short film, short stories. The problem here is that being shorter and cheaper to make isn’t a reason for an audience to watch, and it’s impossible for an audience not to compare your property to the already-established medium you based it off of.

Read the full article for more of his controversial (though mostly agreeable) argument.

Happy Labor Day

Heard this tune and got excited for what’s to come in November. Matt & Kim have done it again. Pure pop greatness.

Unreal… Just incredible.

downtown glare

The future of motion graphics = animated fonts

I had a conversation with Steve about this just a few days back… His take is interesting, although I certainly blame Nielsen over Hulu on this matter.

What can we (as producers) do to introduce a more ubiquitous ratings platform to the business? It seems like Nielsen holds the golden key, but it’s useless to wait for a train that won’t ever come.