Clay Shirky mentioned it some time ago "It's Not Information Overload. It's Filter Failure". And he is right, currently there is so much information that it is hard to filter it correctly to come to the information you need (Well it is not hard to filter it, it is hard to find a filter that fits your needs). Not only will you have this issue in your RSSreader or your inbox, you'll also experience it when visiting websites.
Not only website visitors will experience this issue, website owners will experience related issues. Due to the fact that the visitors cannot find the information they are looking for they will either stop looking and do nothing or will contact the organization of the site via another channel that is more expensive (a call to a helpdesk costs approximately 7 Euros for the helpdesk owner). The result however is a bad user experience for the visitor. Visitors will either not visit the site again and will try to find another more userfriendly site or they will only use the more expensive channel. Both results are not pleasing for neither the owner of the website (resulting in more costs and perhaps even lower revenue) nor for the visitor (bad user experience and wasting time on another channel than he initially prefered).
Therefore information filtering as well as behavioral targeting is the big thing for 2009. It will enables the visitor to get to the information he needs within the amount of time he wants to spent to look for this information. By customizing the website in run time on the personal needs of the visitor the site owner is able to create a nice you experience and the website owner will save money by having less phone calls and perhaps even earn more money due to the fact the visitor is seduced by some products he really could use that pops up thank to behavioral targeting.
