MAKING DATA WORK HARDER

摘要

As more activities move into networked spaces, more areas of our lives are shedding data. This data is increasingly being mined for intelligence that drives services. A major attribute of Internet companies like Google and Amazon is how they squeeze as much value as they can from the data they have. In other words, they make their data work harder. A good example is Amazon's recommendation service. Amazon looks for patterns in sales data and creates services that inform (or even gently nudge) the user's book purchasing decisions. What Amazon does is based on the assumption that people who have agreed in the past will tend to agree in the future, meaning "readers who purchased Book A also purchased Book B" or "if you like Book C you will also like Book D." Another particularly innovative use of data to link potentially similar materials is the "Statistically Improbable Phrases" associated with each title. Amazon scans the full text of books available through its "Search Inside" feature and identifies phrases that are distinct to a particular book. Amazon then finds other books that contain these rare phrases and links them under the assumption that several books with the same unusual phrases may be related in meaning or subject matter. This helps the reader discover new items, encourages exploration, and makes it more likely they'll become a customer.