Personalization Equals Search
January 27, 2012
I am shopping. Who needs privacy? That seems to be the way most internet shoppers feel according to eWeek’s “IBM: Shopping Experience Outweights Privacy Concerns.” The article reports on a recent IBM survey of 28,000 consumers, most of whom were willing to surrender information on their media usage, demographics, identification information, lifestyle; and even location if it would streamline their shopping experience. Furthermore, explains writer Darryl K. Taft:
Consumers are telling IBM they want to receive more communication—not less—but they want it to be delivered through preferred media channels and in a relevant way. IBM’s ongoing research shows that retailers must provide clear compelling reasons to shop, deliver personalized offerings, and reach shoppers when and where they prefer in order to win over their wallets. And, based on the research, consumers appear to be more than willing to give retailers the data to make this experience possible.
The article goes on to note that the internet has empowered customers, who widely share reviews and influence brands. Retailers must target social media with precision, asserts the write up, the precision that only sophisticated social media data analytics tools can bring. And those tools feed on personal data.
I suppose it is just a matter of priorities.
Cynthia Murrell, January 27, 2012
Sponsored by Pandia.com
SLI Systems Relieves Search Pain at Make Me Heal
December 29, 2011
Since implementing a Facebook search application, retailer Make Me Heal saw its traffic leap ahead. Market Watch reveals the company has found a solution in “Make Me Heal Looks to SLI Systems to Create a Seamless Search Experience Across Multiple Channels.” We learned from the write up:
By working closely with SLI, whose knowledgeable staff handle most aspects of search implementation and ongoing management, Make Me Heal offers a consistent search experience across its website, mobile site, and Facebook application, with matching look and feel of its search box, refinement options, and other features like auto-complete. The search box is placed prominently at the top of all search screens, making it easier for visitors to quickly begin searching from any entry point into the Make Me Heal online catalogue.
Visitors turn to Make Me Heal to find information and products relating to cosmetic surgery, anti-aging, and a range of medical conditions. SLI’s Learning Search makes that research easier.
SLI Systems provides full-service, customized, cloud-based solutions for site-search, navigation, merchandising, and search engine optimization. Its technology studies user behavior over time to deliver more relevant results.
Cynthia Murrell, December 29, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Marketing Love in a Time of Mobile Apps
December 22, 2011
As holiday shopping hits a crescendo this week retailers are examining how to increase sales, analyze shopper data more efficiently and strengthen mobile advertising all in one fell swoop. The article, Malls, Retailers Focus on Mobile Phones to Reach Shoppers, Boost Sales and Study Consumers, on http://www.cleveland.com/, explores some controversial mobile app and Smartphone technologies retailers are employing this holiday season.
Although the Federal Trade Commission and several consumer watchdog groups have put a nix to several Big-Brother-esque programs put in place by malls and large retailers to monitor shopper activity and behavior due to privacy violations, some programs are alive and thriving. Many complain that the programs are all one sided, in favor of the retailer, but that is not necessarily the case. In most instances consumers receive a nice reward for their privacy being violated.
As the article explains of the relationship between retailer and consumer,
With traditional retailers fighting online competition from companies from Amazon to Zappos.com, the retail industry must give consumers a reason to choose brick-and-mortar. Online retailers collect data about shoppers and use that information to tailor advertising and suggest purchases. Now stores and shopping-center landlords see cell phones as a path to influencing what people buy, how long they shop and how much they spend.
Before condemning retailers for utilizing scores of data mines waltzing in and out of their stores every day, consumers should examine their habits and devotion to mobile apps. Without consumer usage these app-utilizing marketing campaigns would be a waste of time. If one doesn’t want to be exploited by a retailer, turn off the phone. Easier said than done, just like search.
Catherine Lamsfuss, December 22, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon, Google, and Android: The Stakes Rise
December 12, 2011
Amazon has added incentive to compete more aggressively with Google. The kids in Mountain View have decided to emulate Amazon’s Prime free shipping model. Google is also collecting different features to build what looks to me like a similar, Amazon type service. Hey, that’s innovation today. Live with it.
Is Google being exploited? It’s hard to imagine, but Datamation makes the case in “How Amazon Is Making a Sucker Out of Google.” Writer Mike Elgan insists that Google’s anything-goes Android policy, in which any company can use Android for any purpose, gives Amazon the leverage it needs to seriously wound the search giant.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which runs a version of Android, is positioned to undercut its competitors. Amazon is literally selling the Fire at a loss, intending to make up the money in easy tablet-based ordering form Amazon.com. This clever bit of manipulation will deal a blow to Android tablet makers and, by extension, to Google. It will also place Kindle Fires in many, many hands, which is where the real trouble starts, according to Elgan. The article asserts:
Amazon sells Kindles in order to sell products and services on the Amazon.com web site. And nearly all these products and services directly compete with Google’s. . . . “The Kindle Fire is the cloudiest of cloud tablets. To use the device is to become a user of Amazon’s cloud services. Cloud storage is free and unlimited for Kindle Fire users, which means there’s no reason to bother with Google’s cloud services.”
Perhaps Elgan is right: Google should play some defense and change its licensing rules before it’s too late? Our view is that Chinese four SIM phone manufacturers will be doing their own thing with Android too. Cat is out of the bag and eating tuna in Seattle.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Amazon, Google, and Android: The Stakes Rise
December 11, 2011
Amazon has added incentive to compete more aggressively with Google. The kids in Mountain View have decided to emulate Amazon’s Prime free shipping model. Google is also collecting different features to build what looks to me like a similar, Amazon type service. Hey, that’s innovation today. Live with it.
Is Google being exploited? It’s hard to imagine, but Datamation makes the case in “How Amazon Is Making a Sucker Out of Google.” Writer Mike Elgan insists that Google’s anything-goes Android policy, in which any company can use Android for any purpose, gives Amazon the leverage it needs to seriously wound the search giant.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which runs a version of Android, is positioned to undercut its competitors. Amazon is literally selling the Fire at a loss, intending to make up the money in easy tablet-based ordering form Amazon.com. This clever bit of manipulation will deal a blow to Android tablet makers and, by extension, to Google. It will also place Kindle Fires in many, many hands, which is where the real trouble starts, according to Elgan. The article asserts:
Amazon sells Kindles in order to sell products and services on the Amazon.com web site. And nearly all these products and services directly compete with Google’s. . . . “The Kindle Fire is the cloudiest of cloud tablets. To use the device is to become a user of Amazon’s cloud services. Cloud storage is free and unlimited for Kindle Fire users, which means there’s no reason to bother with Google’s cloud services.”
Perhaps Elgan is right: Google should play some defense and change its licensing rules before it’s too late? Our view is that Chinese four SIM phone manufacturers will be doing their own thing with Android too. Cat is out of the bag and eating tuna in Seattle.
Cynthia Murrell, December 11, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
China: Quite a Market Despite a Softening Economy
November 29, 2011
My recollection is that Facebook and Microsoft are working to find a way to tap into the China market. Other outfits—for example, Google—tried to change China’s policies. I wonder how well that is working out. Why the interest in China. The Economist reported that the country’s ecommerce sector seems to be chugging along. I read the dead tree version of the story “The Great Leap Online”, The Economist, November 26, 2011, page 78. The authoritative sounding super capitalistic machine shop asserted:
In a new report, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) calculates that every year for the foreseeable future another 30 million Chinese will go online to shop for the first time. By 2015, they each will be spending $1,000 a year—about what Americans spend now. BCG calculates that ecommerce could rise from 3.3 percent of China’s retail sales today to 7.4 percent by 2015—a jump that took a decade in America.
You may be able to find a free digital version of the information at either www.bcg.com or www.economist.com. Finding a way to work with the political realities of China may be of more utility in the economics sense than trying to get the koala to knock off the nocturnal leaf munching. I can see a zoo keeper lecturing a koala, but the koala may be disinterested.
Stephen E Arnold, November 29, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Offers Free Web Sites for New York Businesses
November 24, 2011
Search Engine Watch reported this week on website services in the article “Websites are Now Free For New York Businesses.”
According to the article, as a way to promote Google’s services to New York businesses, Google is now offering free websites as part of a deal they have made with the website building firm Intuit to get more local businesses online. In conjunction with the new product, Google is also holding events throughout the state to provide people with information about online marketing.
Google’s Website states:
“Small businesses are vital to America’s economic future; the nation’s 27.5M small businesses comprise half the US GDP and create two-thirds of all new jobs. While 97% of Americans look online for local products and services, 52% of New York small businesses do not have a website. That’s a lot of small businesses that are virtually invisible to potential customers looking online.”
Since web hosting and domain names are cheap as it is, Google can make more money from selling ad space on these free websites. Both Google and small businesses can increase their profits through this deal. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Jasmine Ashton, December 1, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
McKinsey Measure’s The Economic Impact of the Internet
November 14, 2011
The global system of interconnected computer networks that we know as the Internet serves billions of users worldwide. But few people realize the financial impact it has on the world. I came across a fascinating article this week that sites a recent McKinsey report explaining the different facets of the Internet as a global economy in three sections.
According to the Atlantic article, “The $8 Trillion Internet: McKinsey’s Bold Attempt to Measure the E-conomy,” with an $8 trillion global economy, the Internet accounted for 21 percent of GDP growth in the world’s largest economies over the last 5 years. That makes it larger than the economies of many countries.
The article states:
“As an industry, the Internet contributes more to the typical developed economy than mining, utilities, agriculture, or education. In Sweden, fully one-third of economic growth in the five years leading up to the recession came from Internet activities. For the entire G-8, the average was 21 percent. In an analysis of France since the mid-1990s, McKinsey found that the Internet created more than twice the number of jobs it destroyed.”
While it is difficult to measure the impact that the Internet has on our daily lives, I think McKinsey did an excellent job of visually and numerically presenting this data. Kudos to you!
Jasmine Ashton, November 14, 2011
A9 Flow Augments Shopping Reality
November 4, 2011
Amazon is putting a new spin on search, as reported in Cnet News’ “A9’s Flow app: Augmented consumerism.” This new app for the iPhone allows you to point your device at a product in a brick-and-mortar store and compare and log the price at Amazon. If you wish, you can order it from Amazon right then. The existing Amazon app allowed you to do this, but writer Rafe Needleman finds A9’s Flow, which operates closer to real-time, to be a lot more fun:
The recognizer seems faster and more tolerant of operator sloppiness than other scanner apps. You don’t have to hold very still or align the camera at a right angle to what you’re pointing it at. It’s not like it will pick up multiple items as you just walk by them, but it’s faster and more intuitive than other apps of the type.
As a side note, you can do the same thing at eBay with that company’s RedLaser (though the author finds Flow to be superior to that app, too.)
As the author points out, this sort of app could be but one more nail in the coffin of local businesses. No surprise there.
Cynthia Murrell, November 4, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Natural Language, a Solution Who’s Time Has Come
September 29, 2011
Editor’s Note: The Beyond Search team invited Craig Bassin, president of EasyAsk, a natural language processing specialist and search solution provider to provide his view of the market for next generation search systems. For more information about EasyAsk, navigate to www.easyask.com
This past February I watched, along with millions of others, IBM’s spectacular launch of Watson on Jeopardy! Watson was IBM’s crowning achievement in developing a Natural Language based solution finely tuned to compete, and win, on Jeopardy.
By IBM’s own estimates they invested between $1 and $2 billion to develop Watson. IBM ranks Watson as one of the 3 most difficult challenges in their long and successful history, along with spectacular accomplishments such as the Deep Blue chess program and the Blue Gene, Human Genome mapping program. Rarified air, indeed.
While many were watching to see if a computer could defeat human players my interests were different. Watson was about to introduce natural language solutions to the broader public and show the world that such solutions are truly the wave of the future.
The results were historic. Watson soundly defeated the human competitors. On the marketing side, IBM continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to tell the world that the time for natural language is now.
IBM is not the only firm to bring natural language processing (NLP) into the application mainstream:
- Microsoft acquired Powerset, a small company with strong NLP technology, to create Bing and compete head-on with Google,
- Yahoo, one of the original Internet search companies, found Bing compelling enough to strike an OEM agreement with Microsoft and make Bing Yahoo’s search solution,
- Apple acquired a linguistic natural language interface tool called Siri, which is now being incorporated into the Mac and iPhone operating systems,
- Oracle Corporation bought Inquira for its NLP-based customer support solution,
- RightNow Technologies similarly acquired Q-Go, a Dutch company also providing NLP-based customer support solutions.
Many companies are now positioning themselves as natural language tools and have expanded the once tight definition of NLP to include things such as analyzing text to understand intent or sentiment. This is the impact of Watson – it has put natural language into the mainstream and many organizations want to ride the marketing current driven by Watson regardless of closely aligned their technology is with Watson.
But let’s also look at Watson for what it really is – one of the most expensive custom solutions every built. Watson required an extremely large (and expensive) cluster of computers to run – 90 Power Server 750 systems, totaling 2,880 processor cores. It also required substantial R&D staff to build the analytics, content and natural language processing software stack. In fact, IBM didn’t come to Jeopardy, Jeopardy came to IBM. They replicated the Jeopardy set at IBM labs, placing a a great deal of horsepower underneath that stage.
The first foray of Watson into the real world will be in healthcare and the possibilities are exciting. Clearly IBM intends to focus Watson on some of the largest, most difficult challenges. But how does that help you run your business? You’re not going to see Watson running in your IT environment or on your preferred SaaS cloud anytime soon.
If Watson is focused on big problems, how can I use natural language solutions to better my business today? Perhaps you want to increase website customer conversion and user experience, better manage sales processes, deliver superior customer support, or in general, make it easier for your workers to find the right information to do their job. So where do you go?
That’s where EasyAsk comes in.
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