The confluence of better location data and audio-recognition could mean big changes to seemingly static industries such as retail and radio as they learn more about what customers really want. Read more »
Content owners, whether they are publishers, retailers, or marketers, are always looking for new ways to deliver a unique experience to their customers. We call this content personalization. Key trends in this area are led by a collection of technologies that we call post-programming curation. These technologies use the best of behavioral tracking, collaborative filtering, audience targeting, and dynamic content presentation. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Pointing people to “really interesting articles on the fringes of the internet that you had no idea existed or that you wanted” is still in its very early stages, according to Zite’s CEO and Prismatic’s CTO. Read more at paidContent »
Is Facebook serious with its new partner categories advertising program? Somehow, using offline data to target ads seems like a stretch for a company already facing a privacy backlash and that has such rich data to mine from inside its own platform. Read more »
Dutch newspaper publisher Jan-Jaap Heij talks about why he decided to launch a mobile app that allows readers to subscribe to individual writers for a monthly fee, and how personal brands are the future of journalism. Read more at paidContent »
Hundreds of traditional publishers have erected paywalls around their content, but there is much to be gained by focusing monetization on individuals rather than an entire newspaper. Here are a few suggestions on how publishers could do this. Read more at paidContent »
Causata is really good at helping companies identify consumers and, thanks to new machine learning features, helping them predict behavior many steps down the line. Does all this personal data create a privacy concern? Depends who you ask. Read more »
Gravity, a startup that personalizes reader content for web publishers, is opening up its recommendation engine to anyone that wants to use it. Considering the increasing importance of personalization online, this could be a good deal. Read more »
Personalized profiles are coming to Netflix this year, according to CEO Reed Hastings – but the company is still testing this kind of personalization to make it simple enough. Read more »
Netflix is currently testing personalized profiles for its subscribers, and we’ve got some first photos of how they look like. If successful, these profiles could finally rid your recommendations of your kid’s questionable movie choices. Read more »
Big data technologies are like manufacturing robots: they let people do what they’re already trying to do, only faster than before and at a much greater scale. But as with any other product, that analyzed data is nothing without humans to do something with it. Read more »
Online learning site lynda.com on Monday announced that it had hired Frits Habermann as its new CTO. The former PopCap and Adobe executive will oversee the expansion of the company’s cloud infrastructure and build out new mobile and international platforms. Read more »
New York-based Qloo is launching Thursday with $1.4 million to provide a one-stop shop for cultural discovery. The startup is backed by Kindler Capital, as well as entrepreneur and angel investor Jason Calacanis and actors Danny Masterson and Cedric the Entertainer. Read more »
TheComplete.me, a new social dating service formed by former Match.com executives, is looking to leverage social networking and hyper-personalization and self expression to create a network that’s akin to the Pinterest of dating. It opened up in beta today. Read more »
Just in time for its second birthday, food-finding app Foodspotting is rolling out some major design changes. Starting Wednesday, regular users of the app will notice a redesigned interface and a new logo, meant to emphasize new personalization and social features. Read more »
If your company has a cloud application with a predictable audience size or one that is costing you more than $25,000 a month to host, you may want to consider maintaining a private cloud. This paper provides an overview of the factors that decision makers who are developing a public-to-private cloud-migration strategy should consider, recognizing that public versus private cloud strategy is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It also details pitfalls that must be avoided along the way and provides a case study of Zynga, a company that has found a way to use both the private and public clouds to create a hybrid solution. Companies mentioned in this report include Akamai, Foursquare, Nimbula and ARM. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Connectivity changes everything. That’s the credo driving just about every corner of our day-to-day lives. As human beings, we are now connected to one another through not just our social networks but also our cars, the books we read, the albums we download and even our own health and wellness habits (to name just a few areas). With that in mind, GigaOM Pro has singled out certain areas in the technology industry where we see this shift to constant connectivity taking place most drastically. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
When it comes to offering recommendations and personalized services to users sifting through mountains of digital content, online video could learn a few lessons from the music world. We’ve yet to see an offering for online movies and TV that mimics, say, Pandora’s highly personalized service. ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
CE manufacturers are creating universal search applications to find content on across platforms. But the Holy Grail for content discovery will be a user interface that lets users find content they’re looking for, while also serve up a stream of videos relevant to their interests. Read more »
Israeli startup Personyze is linking with one of the web’s most controversial data collection companies, Rapleaf, to provide new tools for website owners. Can its attempt to help ordinary website owners turn information into actions really solve the big data puzzle? Read more »
Flipboard, one of the first iPad applications to really take advantage of the new device’s touch interface to create a kind of digital magazine, today released a series of updates and new features that turn the app into even more of a tablet-based newsstand. Read more »
Former Twitter CEO Evan Williams breaks the important aspects of identity down into five distinct pieces, including authentication and personalization. But the reality is that what we mean by “identity” can change from moment to moment, and that may be the most difficult problem of all. Read more »
Cablevision’s new iO TV Quick Views feature will enable viewers to build personalized mosaics of content to quickly scan up to nine different channels at once. The feature is rolling out as cable companies seek to improve the user experience for finding content. Read more »
A new iPad app called Zite is the latest entrant in the race to build the “Daily Me,” a personalized newspaper that learns what you like. No one has really won this race yet, although Flipboard appears to be leading — and where is Google? Read more »
Taming Twitter’s stream of endless data can be daunting, especially the more people you follow. But start-up My6sense is bringing some order to the chaos with a new Chrome browser extension that prioritizes a user’s Twitter stream, making it relevant to their tastes and interests. Read more »
With companies looking to leverage your data trail, why not take possession of that information and find innovative uses for it yourself? That’s the question that Jeremie Miller – the developer known behind the open-source protocol that powers many Instant Messaging programs – is trying to answer. Read more »
One of the keys to monetizing NewNet technologies like real-time feeds and social media will be harnessing the massive amounts of data they create. In recent weeks, there have been a handful of announcements illustrating creative ways of using this data. But most of them have ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Now that social is becoming the new norm, the next big battle for companies will be personalization. The company that can get inside my head and deliver tailored recommendations or know what I want without being too stalkerish can walk away with a lot of money. Read more »
Jinni, a video search and discovery service, has raised $1 million from Israeli investment collective Startup Factory, according to Globes Online. Jinni doesn’t have a live site, but it appears to be looking to license its personalized recommendation technology to TV and online video operators, similar […] Read more »
I was checking out personalization service matchmine today and it made me think of Last.fm vs. Pandora for finding music to listen to while I work. Last.fm uses collaborative filtering — recommending music based on what people with similar taste in music like — while Pandora […] Read more »
