Ah, Information Weaponization. Who Would Do That?
April 11, 2018
People are always asking how companies like Facebook, Google, Spotify, and Amazon are able to get to the top of their industries. The answer is very simple: data. While the data these companies use is ordinary by industry standards, how they use it is the most important factor. Facebook, Spotify, Amazon, and Google receive user data and leverage or weaponize it. Forbes explains how important leveraged data is in the article, “How To Successfully Weaponize Your Data.”
Companies receive terabytes of data, but they can weaponize it by using artificial intelligence algorithms to perform specific tasks. As AI becomes more widespread, it will be easier to adopt and figure out how to use it to augment your company. They key will not be getting more or different data than your competition, it will be acquiring better data and then:
“In order to use this information effectively, you must first decide what your goal is — more sales, higher foot traffic in stores, higher awareness of a product, etc. — and then look at the data to see if it is in the right format for use with deep learning. This is something that’s hard to explain simply, but fundamentally, data has to be in a disaggregated state. That means you don’t really need to know how many people visited a store, but instead when exactly each person visited. You no longer need to understand how many sales you’ve made, but what each sale was and to whom. This is important because it allows you to break down the impact that various decisions or strategies have, and evaluate whether or not it’s something you want to continue in the long term. It also allows you to see how trends emerge and follow their trajectory.”
The article then fades into details about the importance of deep learning and how a company’s future success depends on adopting it and leveraging data. Weaponized data is important and will be crucial in the future, but do not forget about the basics of running a company.
Whitney Grace, April 11, 2018
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
