Spindex Revealed
June 2, 2010
Microsoft’s Spindex is likely to add some useful functions to social media access. “Microsoft launches its Impossible Project: Spindex” provides a good description of smart software performing “personal indexing.” The idea is that a user’s social information allows Microsoft software to filter information. Only information pertinent to the user is available. When the source is a stream of Twitter messages, the Spindex system converts the noise in tweets to information related to a user’s interests. For me, the most interesting passage in the write up was:
Spindex is a way of surfacing the most shared or popular items that come through your personal news feeds on social networks like Twitter. Microsoft’s project is part of a wave of similar projects like The Cadmus, Feedera and Knowmore that try and synthesize trends and news streams from personal social networks. “Most people don’t really care about what’s trending on Twitter. They care about what’s trending in your own personal index. They want something that’s private, but that you can possibly make public and share with friends,” said Lili Cheng, who is general manager of the lab.
Objectively the service appears to be useful. Subjectively Microsoft will have to make certain that privacy centric users feel comfortable with the system.
Stephen E Arnold, June 2, 2010
Freebie
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