Monday, March 28, 2011

The other NY Times innovation

I say "other" because I'm not talking about the pay wall that the paper is putting up this week which has received huge attention. I noticed that the New York Times has given more prominence to its personalized recommendation feature (italics mine.) I've been a long time reader of the Times and think it is without a doubt the best newspaper out there. They have tried different content layouts through the years (Select, Reader, etc.) which have met with middling success. And now have moved to give this feature more house banner visibility on it's site.

Recently they have started suggesting articles once a reader reaches the conclusion of an individual article on their site. These suggestions take the shape of banners which slide out from the lower right hand corner of the screen. In my experience, their matching ability to what I have been reading to what might interest me has been pretty good. The suggested articles are fairly topical and relevant to my interests based on what I just read. It is a helpful feature and I find myself drifting from article to article or even rushing to the end to see what it might suggest next.

Now the paper has a compilation of these recommendations in a top 10 list on the right rail of their section front doors (eg Business, Technology, Style, etc.) although I couldn't find it on the site this afternoon. The feature does require authentication, presumably to remember my list rather than collect info about me.  In any case, perhaps they are tweaking it as only two of the ten stories suggested for me seemed relevant. Maybe this is the recommendation cold start problem since I have only read a few online stories recently or there is a kink in the predictive algorithm. In any case, I hope this feature continues as I welcome recommendations from a trustful source who values my time.  We'll see how this story develops over time as they presumably collect more info on my reading habits.

Friday, March 18, 2011

SxSW recap

Wow! South by Southwest was huge this year! This was my third time in the past 4 years. In that time, registration exceeded 3x the attendance only 4 years ago. It's been discovered. Still the conference was wonderfully nourishing (thanks to my dear friend, Delphine, for that description) for both mind and soul. 4+ days of innovation, creativity, and entreprenuerial spirit by nearly 20,000 participants.

There didn't seem to be a breakout technology this year like twitter or Foursquare/Gowalla in past years. If anything, here are the trends:

  • The iPad made it's debut as a hardware platform. Tt was definitely a pro Apple crowd-PCs were in conspicuously low profile even with HP and Microsoft with concourse displays. I predict next year will have a number of sessions talking about the future of tablets, touchscreens, and this new platform.
  • The entreprenerial spirit. Panelists and participants talked about life in a startup. Bizspark had a competition among several startups. Despite the rough economy (maybe becuase of it) small businesses were alive..and maybe well. At least they were surviving. And on the larger front, Groupon is thriving, facebook is huge (still), and there are many emerging and established not-so-startups waiting to go public.
  • Mobile. Everyone knows this will be huge but is not sure how to implement it yet. Lots of great sessions on apps, gellocation services and small screen design. Next yeat this will be huge once we figure out mobile commerce.
  • Game-ification. Making everything have some type of game. I think this is a fad but there were a number of sessions about it. No, not everyone wants to this, people! The tech community spends a lot of time navel gazing, I think,
The City of Austin was also a clear winner. The area around the convention center has been discovered by both temporary corporate marketers and permanant local businesses as a good place to set up shop. 20K people returned to their corner of the world to spread the word about how great Austin's scene/weather/people are. (Please, don't move here. Visiting is great!)

On the personalization front, there were a few panels that addressed issues around data privacy, recommendation engines, and push for relevancy. Had a stimulating conversation on a panel hosted by a rep fro Bazaar Voice and Zaaz on exchanging value for privacy and what that means to the futgure of e-commerce.

Thanks to the organizers, volunteers and participants who keep this such an energized and valuable confernece. I highly recommend everyone attend...well its seems like most already do. Soon it will be so crowded, nobody goes there any more.