danielknox.net

The Economist had an interesting article this week on the data deluge, in which it argued that, to help users feel like they retain control over their online data, sites need to make more data available to their users:

First, users should be given greater access to and control over the information held about them, including whom it is shared with.

I totally agree that sites should provide greater transparency with respect to tracking and data collection / storage. The Economist highlights Google which allows its users to see what information Google holds about them, and lets them delete search histories or modify the targeting of advertising.

Other sites are increasingly doing this too. For instance, I really like how the Newstogram technology has been implemented on DailyMe.com with a dedicated “My Newstogram” page which shows me what data the site is stored about me, explains how the data will and will not be used, and gives me the ability to correct the data or to opt out of tracking altogether.

Yahoo has similar functionality available through its Ad Interest Manager page (although Yahoo is either tracking a lot less about me or is not as good at determining my interests as they only have me pegged as a generic sports fan).

Last week Google Reader introduced two new features to help users find interesting content. Google claims that one of these, the new and improved Recommended items section, has items “selected just for you”.

Today was the first time I had the chance to play with the Recommended items section and I have to admit to being totally unimpressed. For some reason, Google Reader thought I’d be interested in ctrl+z stationary (above), glass toilets, little people and some research about women’s preference for hairy geeks! In fact almost every item in my Recommended items section was a popular (100+ ‘likes’) photo or cartoon with no relation to the hundreds of items I read every day through Google Reader. If there is personalization happening it is either incredibly subtle or not very good.

Interesting PBS interview with Krishna Bharat (creator of Google News) and Josh Cohen (GM for Google News) which clearly sets out Google’s plan to focus on greater personalization and provide tools to help news industry become more personal…

Can you talk about some projects you’re working on now, anything coming up with publishers?

…..

Bharat: The other thing we have a broad interest in is personalization. Every time a reader looks at something and says ‘that’s not for me’ and moves on, there’s inefficiency in the system. Along with getting the top news of the day, we want to make sure the rest of their experience is as efficient as possible — not only on Google News but on other publishers’ sites. Trying to be smart about selecting content will help the industry, and that’s something we’re investing resources to try to figure out how that can be done differently. And when we have technology that’s ready, we’d be happy to work with the industry to make that successful.


Would you go by what users input or by their browsing history?

Bharat: A bit of both. Obviously if users are willing to tell us, that’s great. It’s very accurate. Beyond that, there’s plenty of evidence from the way they browse the content to tell us where their attention is going.

Google recently announced it was changing the way ads were selected for placement alongside Gmail messages:

Until now, the ads you’ve seen next to a message were picked based on the content of that message only. For example, if you’re looking at a confirmation email from a hotel in Chicago, you might see ads about flights, restaurants or other things relevant to your trip to Chicago.

But sometimes, the ads related to a particular message aren’t good enough. Rather than show less relevant ads, Gmail can now instantaneously serve ads based on another recent message on the same page of your inbox, helping make the ads more relevant to you. For example, if your friend sends you a message to say happy birthday, but there aren’t any good ads to show related to birthdays, you might see ads related to another message in your inbox instead — like flights to Chicago.

Interesting post on Techcrunch re YouTube rating system.

YouTube are now soliciting via their blog for suggestions to improve their rating system, and at least one person is advocating a system similar to DailyMe’s ‘Face-It’ which would allow viewers to tag content with their impressions e.g. “hilarious” or “cute” or “interesting”.

Via Twitter:
@susannahvila - Marissa Mayer suspects that engagement with news would increase if every citizen had his or her own personalized news feed. #focas09
@kensands - #focas09 Marissa Mayer of Google: personalized news feed with personalized ad feed. Hmm. Sounds like a business model.

Great Wired article on focusing on Google’s online auction system.

According to Sharon Waxman at TheWrap.com, Google is working on a platform “that will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it.”

Apparently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed several details to Waxman including: Users will be presented with high-quality news that is specifically targeted to them based on “search words, user choices, purchases [presumably via Google Checkout]” without needing to first conduct a search; and the New York Times and Washington Post will be among the first newspapers to have their content delivered through this channel.

Via VentureBeat.