The new wave of crowd-sourced information is upon us, with news emerging of Aol’s relatively new but still underutilized service Owl. Deemed Aol’s answer to Wikipedia, this human-powered collection of user-generated and premium content is planned to use towards the creation of an online resource for searchers. Pulling from Aol’s content management system Seed, it appears as though Aol’s current efforts are moving towards the utilization of user-generated information in order to better contextualize the web.
This particular aspiration is shared by several other companies, from Google to Microsoft. Real time efforts in particular have put the project of improving the contextualization of shared web content front and center, though there is a relatively long history of services pushing towards a more semantic web for some time now.
Making articles and photos more readily searchable is a massive undertaking, and it’s one which most major (and smaller) companies have attempted in the past. Some of these efforts were halted by an inability to do this on a large scale, or a slow uptake from users.
Recent changes in social networks and content management systems have made for easier access to shared information, including APIs that can tap into the content we post on sites like Twitter and Facebook. A lessened reliance on users to contribute directly to such a network mans that a resurgence of such content aggregation is now more feasible.
Aol is particularly interested in growing the various aspects of its company as it is now once again independent from Time Warner. The past few years have been an exercise of focus and determination as Aol has been working on re-branding itself and releasing more products for its customers. Shifting its focus from products that directly monetize consumers to something more ad-revenue based has been a massive project for Aol considering its size. The renewed focus on crowd-sourced initiatives could possibly make Aol more nimble in some regards, giving it an opportunity to rise to prominence once again.