Industry Analysis
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Five Surprising Ways to Use Interest Graphs
Interest graphs simulating human activity Imagine filling out your social network with digital companions or forming focus groups of imaginary people for your market research. Interest graphs are supposed to represent the interests of real people, right? But what if real people aren’t available?…
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A Reality Check on Big Data
The fervor around big data continues to grow. The World Economic Forum and The New York Times are jumping on the bandwagon. While we share their enthusiasm for the potential, big data needs a reality check. Here are just a few of the how-do-you-get-there-from-here…
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What is Interest Networking?
A growing list of companies are making “interests” the focus of their value proposition: Twitter allows you to “follow your interests”; Gravity (AOL) “unlocks the interest graph”; Pinterest “organize(s) and share(s) the things you love”; Quora “connects you to everything you want to know…
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Where Big Data Fails…and Why
Data-driven technologies are plagued with small data problems. Their performance suffers in markets that aggregate a large number of unique interests. Some of the largest markets share these small data characteristics, including local ecommerce, personalized media, and interest networking. New approaches are needed that…
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Content curation needs to be simpler
In the early days of the Web, librarians would often compile directories of “trusted sites” on a range of important topics. In fact, Yahoo! has its roots in what was essentially a human-edited directory of online content — then called David and Jerry’s Guide…
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Why the Web Needs Automating
Technology was supposed to revolutionize our lives. There were promises of 20-hour work weeks, robotic servants to do our bidding, and leisurely weekday afternoons in the sun. That was a fantastic dream. So what happened along the way? Today, we face the grim reality…
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Antisocial Networking: How Small (and Valuable) Can Social Networks Get?
Antisocial networks like Snubster began as parody; a backlash against large social networks and our fatigue in managing virtual “friends” we barely know. But there are far more powerful and systemic trends leading towards true antisocial networks. The question of where social networking is…
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Interest Networks Don’t Need to Socialize
Here’s a glimpse into a future where interest networks are liberated from documents and social networks. Past: Connecting People The social dimension of the Web imparts a powerful influence on knowledge acquisition. People discover each other through the intersections of documents they create. Unfortunately,…
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An Introduction to Interest Networking
Our interests are fleeting and immaterial, this mysterious stuff that’s locked away in our heads. Painstakingly, we collect our interests and transform them into words and documents. This transformation from interests into action is time-consuming and expensive, a decidedly “offline” and manual process. What…
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The Semantic Web Isn’t Just a Data Web
The Semantic Web has a branding problem: It was built to manage data, not semantics. Somewhere along the line, insiders renamed it the “Data Web”. That was a great move for Web researchers, but what will the semantics crowd do with the name? Just…
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The World’s First Mainstream Semantic Web
The vast majority of semantic technologists are directing their efforts to search. It’s an important use of their talents; search is a hard problem worth solving. But it seems to me that we need to take a broader view. Semantics is the stuff of…
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No Need to Argue Personal Semantics
In December 2006, James Kim and his family were stranded, their car stuck in heavy snow. After a week, fearing for their survival, James headed out into the wilderness to find help. In the dead of winter, he was wearing nothing but street clothes.…
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A Made-To-Order Web
The Web suffers a fundamental problem. Search is a symptom of it. Surfing is a symptom of it. Even the website itself is a symptom of it. The problem is that content is organized for you, in advance. Pre-packaged content is like ordering off…