Capturing Intention in User Behaviour - Do it Directly

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I had an interesting conversation at OpenCoffee London yesterday around personalisation and recommendations. At they table were several people involved in companies that are in the area of marketing analytics and personalisation and recommendations.

One interesting point raised was that as targeting becomes more and more focused, there is a loss of information that can harm personalisation/recommendation algorithms. There is a point where targeting stops being effective in delivering relevant personalisation and recommendations. I'll return to this later.

Of more note was how capturing attention is difficult, indeed impossible with behavioural tracking. In "Wither Social Networks, Arise Communities" and "Resources vs Answers - Asking a Question of Search" posts I've look at the importance of intent to properly target a user. What came in the conversation yesterday was be direct. Essentially, ask the user what their intent is and stop trying to guess. Allow the user to tell you (the business/software etc.) exactly what their intent is.

The example used was booking flights to Edinburgh. Currently travel sites get you to input the departure, destination and dates. Then give you lots of results which you have to wade through and links to ads for various travel related items in Edinburgh. However, there is no way for the site to tell what links it should show or how to order the results.

If however, the user starts by telling the service "I want flights to Edinburgh for a weekend of fun" suddenly the service has a slew of information that it can use to target the right ads and services and also organise the results. From that simple statement, the system "knows" the following information:

• The flights need to be Friday afternoon/evening and Sunday afternoon/evening
• The purpose is fun so flights need to be cheap/reasonable
• The person will be looking for tourist, entertainment stuff to do

From this new knowledge the system can prioritise flight results and target service suggestions and advertising better to the person's intent. This wouldn't be hard to do. It is a step away from normal form-based UI into NLP but it opens a whole new vista of opportunities.

Wither Social Networks, Arise Communities

A community is an assemblage of people around a common interest. What Hugh MacLeod calls a social object. Social Networks, like Facebook, are glorified contact books. And as Facebook is finding out, people get stroppy when you get between them and their contact books.

A community, on the other hand, behaves differently. The members of a community are there because of the shared interest or bond, the social object. Consider the rise of communities around particular diseases as highlighted in this week’s NewScientist (vol 198, issue 2656). These communities are generating a wealth of data about these diseases that would otherwise be expensive or impossible to obtain. Communities tend to generate data around the particular shared interest beyond simply demographics that you get in a Social Network.

The data is hugely important. As Tim O’Reilly is fond of saying, “data inside” is the new “Intel Inside” (between time point 2.15 to 3:20 in the presentation). The value of web companies is entirely determined by the data they can aggregate and turn into new knowledge. Communities generate large amounts of data by harnessing the network effect. As each member adds more data around the shared interest this creates a positive feedback loop encouraging more people to add more data and so on in a virtuous cycle. A good example of this principle in action is the company Wesabe (also discussed by Tim O’Reilly in his keynote at 2008 Web2.0 Expo).

Social Networks don’t have this positive feedback loop that generates great swathes of data. While they do have network effects this is merely increasing the size social network by members rather than adding large amounts of data. We are even seeing indications now of limits to how far network effects work in maintaining growth of membership. The amount of data in social networks is relatively limited and most of this information is limited to who knows who and simple demographic data.

Social advertising is the “next big thing” in advertising. However, achieving this on a social network has not been easy. An outcome that is not surprising. The effectiveness of advertising comes down to two things: attention and intent. Attention being what is the person doing at the moment. Intent being why are they doing what they are doing at this time. The more closely you can determine the attention and intent of the user the better the advertising can be made to be of interest to the user.

Social Networks do not offer great data to determine attention and intent. Just because you are a 46 year-old climate researcher, does that determine why you are looking for a holiday? An advertiser could assume you are looking for a holiday for yourself but there is no evidence for this. Nor can a social network really say whether you are looking for holiday in the first place. There is little data to indicate attention and intent. Communities on the other hand do offer good data for determining attention and intent. Consider the climate researcher. He joins a community around travel and holidays and asks the question of the community “what is a good holiday as a birthday present for my 16 year old daughter?” Now we know attention (searching for a holiday) and intent (as a present for his 16 year old daughter). Having this data allows the advertiser to very accurately target with information about holidays suitable for a 16-year old girl.

People like being part of a community. We are tribal at heart. A social network is a mathematical abstraction that merely indicates a connection. The tribe will always win over the maths. Communities will win over social networks.

Tags: Tim O'Reilly, Social Networks, Hugh Macleod, Social Object, Community, Data Inside, Attention and Intent, Facebook, Wesabe

Put it in RSS

Something that has been annoying me for a while is the lack of companies and industry bodies that don't put their news and press releases in an RSS feed. Or if they do require you to register. This post goes out to them.

I will say this slowly. Put. Your. Press Releases. Into. A. Feed. And make it public available. The purpose (and please correct me if I am wrong) of a press release is to make an announcement that reaches as many people as possible. The very fact you do not put your press releases in a feed restricts the number of people who can see.

Nor do I wont to register and receive emails. I just want an RSS feed with your press releases. There is absolutely no benefit for me to register for your press releases. Registering is only useful when the user gets a service out of it. Press releases are not a service.

It is even more nonsensical for industry bodies not to put press releases in a RSS feed. The whole point on an industry body is to act as advocate and communicate with society. Making it difficult for me to get hold of press releases is not the way to do it. I do not want to have to visit your site to check. I do not want to have to work at it. Nor do I want to register to get an email. I get enough already.

I'll say it again. Put your press releases in a RSS feed.

Tags: RSS, Marketing, PR

Social Networks and Attention

I was at dinner with Howard Rheingold organised at the very last moment by Ian Forrester. It was a very good evening thoroughly enjoyed. But this post isn't about the actual dinner but a comment made by one of the attendees.

Discussion had turned to "The Daily Show" and "Colbert Report." Then the comment was made "I watch 'The Daily Show' but not the 'Colbert Report' as I am sure with my social network that if there is something really funny on the 'Colbert Report', I will find out about it" or words to that effect.

The comment shows an interesting trend in managing attention. People are using their social networks to expand the amount of attention they have. By relying on different parts of your social network to pay attention for interesting items effectively expands the amount of attention a user has.

What is the impact of this? I'm not sure as I haven't had the chance to fully think the implications through. Top of the head is that it will complicate the monetisation of attention. It also indicates that making very general social networks profitable will not be easy. The better route is adding social networking features around a series of more focused websites. Shades of the old Geocites and AngelFire?

The other side of the coin is that this is an interesting adaptation by an individual to managing information overload.

Tags:Attention, Social Networks, Geek Dinners