The Gap Between People And Platforms




I think Dave and Alvin have put their collective thumbs on something that extends beyond our industry: the growing gap between people and platforms. I’ll use my current industry as an example: travel. It’s something we all do, so we can all relate to it.




TripAdvisor almost singlehandedly ushered in an era of do-it-yourself travel planning. For any destination in the world, we can now find the restaurants, accommodations, tours and attractions that are the favorites of other travelers. It allows us to both discover and filter while planning our next trip, something that was impossible 20 years ago, before TripAdvisor came along. 

But for all its benefits, TripAdvisor also leaves some gaps.

The biggest gap in travel is what I’ve heard called the “Other Five.” I live in Canada’s wine country (yes, there is such a thing). Visitors to our valley -- the Okanagan -- generally come with five wineries they have planned to visit. The chances are very good that those wineries were selected with the help of TripAdvisor.

But while they’re visiting, they also visit the “other five”: five wineries they discovered once they got to the destination. These discoveries depend on more traditional means -- either word of mouth or sheer serendipity. And it’s often one of these “other five” that provide the truly memorable and authentic experiences.


We all want to see the same things -- up to a point.But then we want to explore the “other five,” and that’s where we find the gap between platforms and people.

We have been trained by Google not to look beyond the first page of online results. It’s actually worse than that. We don’t typically scan beyond the top five. Yet, by the very nature of ratings-based algorithms. that's always where you’ll find the “other five.” They languish in the middle of the results, sometimes taking years to bump up even a few spots.

It’s why there’s still a market -- and a rapidly expanding one, at that -- for a tour guided by an actual human. Humans can think beyond an algorithm, asking questions about what you like and pulling from their own experience to make very targeted and empathetic suggestions.

The problem with platforms is their preoccupation with scale. They feel they have to be all things to all people. I’ll call it Unicornitis: the obsession with gaining a massive valuation.

Platforms approach every potential market focused on how many users they can capture. By doing so, they have to target the lowest common denominator. The web thrives on scale and popularity -- the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Yes, there are niche players out there, but they’re very hard to find. They are the “other five” of the Internet, sitting on the third page of Google results.


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