Tech & VC 05 Sep 2007 03:33 pm
Juxtaposed Sensational Headlines
I was doing a Google search regarding vertical search engines today when I got the following comical results involving Read/Write Web on the Google search engine results page (SERP):
I thought the juxtaposition of the two headlines was pretty funny. The two headlines discuss essentially the same issue with quite contradictory projections. Each news story discusses a small battle, and both stories forecast over-reaching, inconsistent implications for the larger war. Of course, this bias for sensationalism in the news is not limited to tech blogs, but this example really jumped out at me because the two headlines lined up so well in the SERP.
There are a few other lessons to be learned from this example. Innovation moves lightning quick in the web services sector and can make last months headlines look absurdly wrong. Also, in a world where all old news is just a search query away, a SERP can act as an interesting history lesson, organized by importance of events in descending order. Related concept: if it’s not on the web, it didn’t happen.
2 Responses to “Juxtaposed Sensational Headlines”
on 05 Sep 2007 at 5:00 pm 1.Alex Iskold said …
The funniest part is that both post are by me. But they are at different times and actually there is more substance in the posts than just in headlines.
Alex
on 05 Sep 2007 at 5:16 pm 2.Alex Iskold said …
6 months apart (read eternity). I will forward this one to Richard, either way – we are the experts on the vertical search!
Alex