Digital Homebodies

How an increasingly content digital audience could mean the end for search

Few people dislike the Google “Search On” commercials, showing someone’s unique story through the content they type into the search bar, and how one event leads to unother unfolding, creating our journey through life.

What I find most compelling about these stories is how fictionalized they are. I do think our search queries could tell a story for us, but at this point, they don’t need to — we’re already living online and off simultaneously, our entire stories crafted and preserved by the publications we enjoy, the communities we’ve built, and the content we share. Google+ instead could tell those stories, if it had taken off. Yet the culmination of many curated platforms already do it so well, leaving the company to concentrate on browser based search, which I feel could one day be obselete.

The mass adoption of mobile technology has given us no excuse to have a uniquely personalized experience in the digital world, where every touchpoint we engage with has been curated and customized to fit our needs exactly. It’s as if we’ve graduated from renters to homeowners; we have our own corner of the Internet that’s completely ours to change and control. Even the content that we engage with is increasingly created by our neighbors; photos, videos, blogs, status updates…these digital communities, unlike many real-world counterparts, are partly sustained simply by what the neighborhood produces.

For example, my digital Internet is uniquely my own. I spend significant amounts of time reading content from Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, created by friends and co-workers more than brands and celebrities. I explore other online articles through publications collected on my Feedly, restaurants through Foursquare, visual inspiration on Pinterest and Tumblr, etc. I’ve created an experience where my neighborhood nearly completely sustains me for whatever I need, and only rarely do I need to open my Google Chrome app to search for something. When I do, it’s random, unrelated, and usually not very actionable — more for my own sake of mind than anything else. Names of celebrities, ingredients of a cocktail, cross streets of museum, etc.

I think because of all this, we’re feeling pretty confident living in the digital age. Content consumption has never been higher; everyone thinks they’re the next big photographer, and overall mass adoption of mainstream digital technology is around the corner. There’s still a lot of missteps and mishaps that this digital era will bring because of how comfortable we all have become, which I feel is temporary in the grand scheme of things.

As in any other feeling of contentment, digital users are going to find themselves less curious of what else is out there. And we’re already seeing users become more discerning of the apps they try, and networks they join. Digital natives are less inquisitive because they have everything they need, can access it easily, and have few desires to go searching. This is also because curated platforms have become smarter to contextualize the data shared, which is why you can read articles in the Twitter app, or view a photo map on Instagram, and pin directly from Feedly. At the very least, there’s probably a #hashtag linking you to more content within that experience. There’s no longer a need to journey out into the unknown, that big white tundra of the Google home page.

We could one day come into a world where search is de-monetized; where the volume of search engine search queries decrease because we’ve already surrounded ourselves with all the information we need. And as social networks, Facebook most recently, has learned, revenue lies in interrupting that steady stream of curated information right where the user is, using our profiles, plump with data, to send something as appealing as possible so we barely have to lift a finger to experience it. Facebook 15-second video ads will auto-start in our feeds; we barely have to move an eye muscle to see them. And, begrudingly, they become the mosquitoes of the neighborhood we’re not ready to leave.

I find it funny that when consumer electronics really took off, consumers shifted from wanting to the explore the real world to the digital world, yet now that our digital communities have matured we’re obsessed as a society to travel the unknown globe. Perhaps Google will be waiting for a different kind of digital traveler in the future, but for now, I’m content with what’s in front of me online, and what I can’t see offline.