7 highlights
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When Amazon makes so-called contextual recommendations calling it, “People who bought this also bought…”, I really have nothing to appreciate it for. It’s simply an algorithm designed that way, mining troves of data to add that context when I’m on the site.
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But, when Amazon connects the dots between my picking 3 different soaps with a citrus fragrance and make a recommendation for a 4th citrus fragrance based soap, I would find that both useful and interesting
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Netflix’s use of data is legendary – it knows the kind of scenes we like, the kind of endings we like, the kind of plots we like and uses all that to make decisions on new shows and plots. So, the question arises – is the dog wagging the tail or the tail wagging the dog?
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Epic’s team knows that children prefer owls to chickens and chickens to hedgehogs. Kids hunt for unicorns almost twice as often as they look for mermaids.
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Snapshots of recent activity on the site offer a fascinating glimpse into the child hive mind. Searches are by kids up to 12 years old, the company said, with most of them likely by children 6 to 10.
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Now, this is not new at all. Google has a treasure trove of our search data to customize our search results. But when Epic uses data such as ‘owls are the most popular amongst our readers’ to create a new owl character, there is no surprise in why that title become so popular.
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While I understand using such data to dictate new choices in terms of story lines and characters, something I’m sure Netflix factors in for viewers too, where does that leave the children (and us, when it comes to Netflix) in terms of feeding our own biases and reiterating our predisposed interests?