Everytime we come to the Internet for help, we’re a different person.
Dr. Jon Roberts, Chief Innovation Officer at About.com, presented observations from 20 years of user behavior and interaction with over 35 Million posts. I wrote about that presentation in an earlier post.
It’s your context… what’s going on in the world right now… that is more reflective of what you need, than the last 6 months of your browsing history.
Continue reading “Context: The key to personalization”
At the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin, Dr. Jon Roberts gave us a peak into observations and lessons from over 20 years of user searches. You can read about that in my last post.
As he looks for trends, he realizes that they may lead to overgeneralizations. “I care about individuals in real life, I don’t care about them in my data analysis”.
Demographically, he broke down some interesting observations about millennials, based on the searches and questions they are asking. Continue reading “What about.com can tell us about millennials”
About.com launched 20 years ago. While they predate Google’s Pagerank, they show up as a top source for about 30% of all questions asked on Google in the U.S. That gives them a unique view at what America is concerned about. Dr. Jon Roberts, the Chief Innovation Officer at about.com, believes he is able to see the heartbeat of the nation, in the way we ask questions. He broke it down at this year’s South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive festival.
“Studying the data underpinning the Internet is as weird and fascinating as studying the universe.”, says Roberts. He worked to condense massive amounts of data, from over 35 Million posts, to some simple data visualization. In doing so, About.com was able to learn some interesting things from the deep to the … well… not so deep. Continue reading “What about.com has learned from 20 years of watching us”
Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) is a South by Southwest regular, and his sessions still pack a ballroom. At SxSW 2017, Vaynerchuk’s session was a 100% Q&A format. The format lent itself less to a blog post recap, and more to a collection of quotable moments and takeaways. Here are a few that I walked away with, and a few more from the Twitterverse:
So many of us are focusing on things like VR, when we haven't even figured out how to do a Facebook Ad Buy @garyvee #sxsw
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) March 10, 2017
Entrepreneurship is hard, and we tend to overglorify it. We are pushing too many kids towards it. @garyvee #SXSW pic.twitter.com/xV8eUBfZc7
— Carl Bliss (@ckbliss) March 10, 2017
Too many people think they're influencers before they are. Put your head down, put out good content & be patient. @garyvee #AskGaryVee #SXSW pic.twitter.com/Hy2uVYoyW1
— Amy Heiss (@HeissofTexas) March 10, 2017
"No one in this room wants more ads, they want content, and they don't care if it's from a network or YouTuber" –@garyvee #AskGaryVee #sxsw
— Jeff MacDonald (@JeffMACaddress) March 10, 2017
"With all the data and tech in the world, the creative is still the key" #AskGaryVee #sxsw
— Jeff MacDonald (@JeffMACaddress) March 10, 2017
Amber Case has the coolest job title ever.
The self-proclaimed “Cyborg Anthropologist” is an experience designer who focuses on the mobile environment and the augmented reality concepts we use to extend our capabilities. Case argues that, because we have all become cyborgs. Not in the Robocop/Terminator sense of the word, but we all inserted devices into our lives in a significant way, that seek to greatly extend our capacity in a non-physical way.
Geolocation beyond the Check-in
In her March 11 keynote at the 2012 South by Southwest Interactive Festival, Amber indirectly encouraged location based technology to begin looking beyond the concept of ‘Check in’, to the use of location based systems to enhance our existing interactions with our surroundings.
Current geo-location apps (think Foursquare), allow us to check in and push our behaviors out to our digital world. Case encouraged the attendees to think beyond that and to consider using location data to enhance more passive activities. From narrative Wikipedia information on a historic building you passed, to the new location based reminders; how can we use our location aware devices to pull rather than push.
Dissatisfied with the current location based platforms, Amber founded Geoloqi. The Geoloqi platform allows app developers to layer location data, analytics and messaging onto their apps in a powerful way. At the tail end of the keynote, Case took a moment to highlight new partnerships with Appcelerator, Factual and Locaid that would extend the platform.
One of the most intriguing features of the Geoloqi platform, is a “geofence” algorithm that seeks to preserve battery life and provide more control over the interaction by allowing the developer to limit spacial and temporal conditions for the app interaction. Beyond a space based geofence, developers can use other information such as time of day, speed, altitude and address location information to trigger app events.
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