Many months ago, Derek Slater pointed me to the paper he did while he was at the Berkman Center late last year. It’s been on my to-read list ever since, and I’ve finally gotten a chance to check it out.
The paper reports on the increasing popularity of what they call “taste-sharing” tools on the Internet. That would include peer-to-peer file-sharing sites, but it also includes collaborative filtering tools like Amazon’s “People who bought this book also bought…” feature, and Apple’s iTunes playlist sharing tools.
Clearly, the trends Derek identified in this paper have continued into 2006, as evidenced by Microsoft choosing to make music sharing one of the central selling points of its Zune media devices. I’ve also read that the community features of YouTube were an important factor in that sites meteoric rise. Consumers clearly love being able to share their cultural tastes with others, and so smart media companies will find ways to make it easier for their customers to recommend their products to others.
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