It used to be Top 10 Lists. David Letterman still uses Top 10 Lists, but ever since I saw High Fidelity, it's been Top 5 Lists for me.
Top 5 Movies, TV Shows, Events, Trends, and People of the Year:
Movies:
1. Undercover Brother
2. xXx
3. 8 Mile
4. Minority Report
5. Gangs of New York
TV Shows:
1. Alias
2. Curb your enthusiasm
3. Sex and the City
4. West Wing
5. The Sopranos
Events:
1. Birth of our daughter Miriam ("Mimi") Elizabeth Canter - Feb. 18th, 2002 :-)
2. Meeting Marc Barrot via Paolo and hooking up with Doug Baron and Mikel Maron (Sept. '02)
3. Performance by my sons Aron in Titanic (Jan. '02) & Annie (May '02), Jacob doing "Autumn Leaves" ala Miles Davis (Dec. '02) and my eldest Aryeh, in the game of life (all year.)
4. Completing our business plan and relaunching our company (April '02 - v.1, Nov. '02 - v.2)
5. Cancellation of My .Net Services (Feb. '02), Barry Schuler fired (March '02), AOL Broadband formed (Spring '02)
Trends:
1. Understanding that micro-content means something more than Blogs
2. Acceptance of media and messaging in on-line text based publishing
3. Broadband Penetration exceeds 20% worldwide
4. Continued announcements of very cool hardware (hybird DVD/PVR, Danger Hip Top, Intel Missing link box, Entertainment PC's)
5. Continued exposure of corrupt, inept CEOs and boards and the on-going embarassment of VC's
People:
1. Lisa Brewer Canter
2. Barry Bonds
3. Vin Diesel
4. Jimmi Johnson
5. Dave Jacobs
I see these Top 5 lists (or however many #'s you wish) to be a form of Reviews - which we've idetified as another 'blog-type' (or shall I say 'micro-content' type.) In teh future we'll have ways for people to share Reviews.
If Blogs are unto themselves a type of micro-content, well then shouldn't conversations, reviews or media objects ALSO be 'micro-content' types? Even employee records or meetings. Or entire projects or fund raising efforts.
Organizing, creating and maintaining complex, on-line communities, services or content should all be as easy as creating email or a word processing document.
By identifying existing notions that we're comfortable with and conotate some well understood meaning, we can use these phrases (such as journals, reviews, conversations or projects) - to encapsulate a whole series of steps, tasks and detail work that must be executed and supported to implement these sorts of interactive experiences.
That said, you could imagine a tool that shared Top 5 Lists or compared them or even had contests as to who's Lists were the most tasteful, most cynical or truly exploitative.
