[dorkwood]

For years, my trick for finding interesting content was to go to, say, the 7th page of Google results, and start there. This doesn't work anymore -- it's SEO-optimised listicle blog posts all the way down.

My trick now is to use Twitter to discover interesting people, and follow them there. Granted, it's not a search engine, but it's at least given me the ability to discover weird things again.

[gbin]

I agree on the original issue but social media tailored to people's own bubble is probably not a good source for enlightenment either...

[dorkwood]

I think it depends how you use it.

One of the things I enjoy doing on Twitter is posting up something I'm working on, and then clicking through to all the profiles of the people who like, comment, or retweet my work. I stumble across an incredibly diverse range of people by doing this, many with conflicting opinions to my own, and many who belong to strange subcultures that I don't understand, but who were all drawn to my work for one reason or another.

I think there's definitely a danger of crafting a bubble for yourself if you choose to use it that way, but as a tool for discovering people making cool stuff who otherwise wouldn't cut through the noise on something like Google search, I haven't found anything better.

[tomaskafka]

Many times I have thought about what could happen if Twitter asked you to recommend up to 3-5 people you value, and write a tweet-sized (or shorted) recommendation.

Over time you would get a 'pagerank for people' and could do awesome stuff with that, like 'You don't know XYZ, but 3 people you trust trust her, and this is what they tell about her:' ...

[halfdan]

Until that gets screwed using social engineering and people optimising for being affiliated with people writing them good reviews.

[Terretta]

You know, for people with Klout.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klout

[edeion]

I was about to ask about dmoz.org. But apparently it's dead. We could probably do something with bookmark sharing à la Delicious. Good dead things for a better future.