The concept that users get less exposure to conflicting viewpoints and are isolated intellectually in their own informational bubble due to personalized search results and streams has been coined by internet activist Eli Pariser. Social results have been a very trendy way to define what and how we discover content, MostPop wants to share with you the most popular links – not just what your friends decide to share to avoid the filter bubble.
MostPop is a Chrome extension that hopes to show what’s popular online, where people are online and what they are looking at. None of the links presented on the site are attached or affiliated to specific users and all the data collected is available for the users benefit. With privacy always being a concern when a site or extension catalogues a user’s browsing history, MostPop calms those issues with a “Whitelist”.
“We do not track any personal sites, and every site we track is posted on our website. Everytime this list changes, users get a notification sent to them advising them of the changes to the tracked sites.”
The Toronto startup asks you to simply install a browser extension (currently only on Chrome), then links your may visit at the sites they track are compiled to build metrics on what people are actually viewing. The behind-the scenes plugin is un-noticeable after installation and currently on their site shares only most recently visited links. However, as more people install the browser extension new features will be added such as a map of internet interest.
A map of internet will show where people are online, like the populations of cities tell us where people are in the world. Founding partner Joelle Fricot tells us:
“We hope to be able to give recommendation and anti-recommendations to show users things they would be interested based on their activity as well as introduce them to things they never otherwise may have had exposure to. Most importantly we hope to break the filter bubble by not segregating our users by any demographics such as location, age, etc. “
As of today, MostPop has acquired 50 users and over 30,000 links and are constantly working on adapting the browser extension for Firefox and Safari. We invite Chrome users to install their browser extension so we all can have access to what’s actually happening on the internet, instead of being restricted to what might be popular based on Facebook and Twitter feeds. MostPop is answering the question: Where people are online and what are they looking at?