What is a destination?

[NB: This is part of what was once a larger post. The other parts have gone here and here]

In an earlier post I listed four types of intention that audiences can have before consuming content. The first three were for something more or less specific: for a particular movie I've heard about, or for something about the war in Iraq, or for a comedy. The fourth and fifth kinds of intention were more open-ended: for today's news, whatever they may be; or for something to entertain me.

Intentions in this second group are catered for by what I've called 'aggregates.' And in the web, aggregates are usually destinations: always-changing pages with memorable URLs that people form allegiance to. Because of the points above, popular destinations have enormous value: between them they largely dictate what is popular and what is not.

Destinations are important because, as I suggested in an earlier post, I can't want to watch yesterday's episode of The Sopranos without a prior interest in the series and what its producer has to offer (or without someone who told me about it, who in turn would have started without knowing about the series and just looking for distraction -- or knows someone who started this way).

People only "know what they want" once they know it exists. And, more often than not, they know that something exists because someone put it in front of them. 'Pull' hasn't replaced 'push': it presupposes it.