soltzvi's posterous

To be human at any level has changed.
The Web ecosystem places the individual's mind directly onto the human stage and now all individuals can collaborate, their private thoughts entering into the space of digital humanity. And now we can observe the behavioral madness that has always existed around us.

Our mind is our private domain. Sometimes we rule and hold the scepter; sometimes we are the slaves of our own mind's creation. Whatever may be the case, the thoughts that we care about the most are almost always with us. We have "privileged access" to the contents of our minds.

Web 2.0 procreate bloggers and more content on the wire, people shared their opinion, emotion, thoughts, we created haven for psychologists that used to only seen a glimpse of humanity; but now they can play in the sands of our minds throughout digital space. Nothing is virtual anymore. What was virtual has become part of our reality; part of who we are.

Social Networks has started a new revolution. Within a fraction of a second, everyone can reach out to many other minds in real time. On the digital stage in view of an online audience, we can create life and act our role. The pieces or parts of minds create the power of many and the net defeat history and can save our tracks forever.

But what’s next? We all want to be heard but do we really have something to say? I ask myself how often I retweet something I see, how often I Like and share vs. really spread my own ideas and perspectives? Does it really matter? how come most of us just increasing the noise, generate buzz and follow the flock as sheep instead of walk free as a wolf. Do we all just turned into lazy monkeys imitate other people in the wild web zoo 2.0 in order to feel our existence, to feel alive?

In the digital age, our psychoanalyst is the data mining system that observes our click streams and figures out our thoughts, feelings, interests, passions, loved ones, our friends – all those out there in the digital atmosphere. The truth about us has yet to be realized.

With so much retweets and shares we start sinking into the content pan. 
Now let’s flash the toilet and start thinking again.

P.S I love monkey-people please retweet this post J 

See also:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/genieo_a_recommendation_engine_that_adapts_to_your.php

http://www.genieo.com/company/press/

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Facebook-vs-Who-Users-Stay-prnews-1138017708.html?x=0&.v=1

Recommendation System: 
Collaboration Filtering vs. Profile-Based Personalization

Personalization is not about a process or a concept but experience, the experience of personalization by real flesh-and-blood people; it cannot be reduced to a statistical model of future behavior based on probabilities and prediction alone. It must be lived, experienced, felt. It is an existential realm, complex and verging on the chaotic, not a forumla that can be reduced to an algorithm.

Personalized experience is part of the subjective field of everybody's life; it might include reflection or random thoughts, but it is not about thinking per se, it is about  feeling, emotions, the flow of sensations.

Because it increases revenues and enhances profits, businesses endeavor to know how to better serve customers. To that end, one new “killer feature” on the internet today is a quick match-up of available services to an online person as manifest through a pattern of clicks.

How can we force this digital box to think out of the box itself and discover a different domain of digital life, a different way of thinking?

In order to implement the mechanism of personalization, a system should predict what will capture the user's attention at any given time. But is the prediction based on past and future, or is prediction in itself a creative act? In the movie The Matrix,  the Oracle told Neo not to worry about the vase, and as Neo turns to look for a vase, he knocks one over, a vase of flowers shatters on the floor. Then the Oracle asks. "Would you have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"

Did the Oracle predict what was going to happen or did she manipulate Neo and cause him to break the vase? And does it really matter? Either way, Neo experienced her words as prophecy, a prophecy he fulfilled. But did the prophecy follow the action or forecast it?

Our individuality is unique

A system intended to make recommendations that are followed by a user must predict a person's choice based on a pattern of interests but also make a person choose – even unconsciously - to create a new behavior. Personalization happens when the new content is based on the person's profile, but does provides something genuinely new, different, and possibly unexpected. Is this a paradox?

There are currently two major methods for providing a working recommendation system:

-    Collaboration Filtering (CF);  recommendation agents employ prediction algorithms to provide users with options that match interests based on membership in a virtual community.

-    Profile-Based Recommendation; user history indicates a user's current or future desires.

Both methods have pros and cons. Combining both provides reasonably good predictions.

Collaboration filtering predicts a person’s interest by analyzing the behavior of the virtual tribe to which he belongs at any given moment. By being identified as one of many. by feeling as if we are known, we feel special ... but do we all really act the same, based on tribal membership, or do we remain unpredictable individuals?

Behavioral patterns

Can past behavior predict future behavior?
If you ask a person how he will react in a situation, although he can't really know, he will base his answer on his past, based on his intentions so far as they can be understood and a relationship between past behavior and future behavior.

Using previous experience is the best way to respond to a question that allows a user to predict his own future actions - we can imagine it, we can envision our self making a decision based on our beliefs, faith and hopes.

But even for ourselves, is a prior behavior really the best predictor of future interest? To some extant yes, probably, but because our intention is dynamically changing and ultimately beyond our full understanding, a personalization system based only on past behavior will not predict the genuinely novel, the really creative, it will not predict, that is, the next click, the click that says “BUY.”

We end as we began: personalized experience is subjective and always, always integrates feelings and emotions. So ... no, I do not like it when a big news portal stereotypes me based on my alleged virtual tribe. And because I don’t like it, I will do what I can to make an unpredictable decision ... to remain free, that is, to remain fully human.

Source: www.soltzvi.com

A system intended to make recommendations on topics followed by a user must predict this person's choices based on patterns he displays in expressing his interests.
At the same time it should allow room for personal active choice making – even at an unconscious level – and so create new behavior.

We're trying to change the nature of software... where people can finally be free from interaction with the machine

In order to implement the mechanism of personalization, a system should predict what will capture the user's attention at any given time.
Personalized software must focus on the user experience; it cannot be reduced to a statistical model of future behavior based on probabilities and prediction alone. It must be lived, experienced, felt.
Personalized experience is part of the subjective field of everybody's life; it might include reflection or random thoughts.
 
Who owns the freedom of our mind? Can our past behavior really predict our future behavior? If you ask a person how he might react in a given situation, although incapable of really knowing, he will base his answer on his past, on his intentions as far as they can be understood and on his respective relationship between past behavior and future behavior.

So, is prior behavior really the best predictor of future interests? To some extent, probably yes. However, because our intentions are dynamic and continuously changing, and they are ultimately beyond our full understanding, the bottom line is: humans are unpredictable. It is the essence of freedom in being human.

Genieo Innovation pioneers a personalization platform which can analyze user's behavior and then enable software to automatically adapt services to individual users based on their own choices. This way, we believe we give people freedom in their digital life." 

Source: www.soltzvi.com

Watch the video

Genieo Reader brings you personalized news from your own reading

Watch the Interview

Throughout the development of Genieo, our vision was to give people the option to think free. For me personally, Genieo has lived up to my expectations and made this vision as real as I have imagined it way back then.
Now our task is to make Genieo available to as many people as possible, and Chrome, being the 3rd most widely used web browser was high on our list.

Today, I'm proud to announce that we have launched a new version of Genieo which is fully compatible with the Chrome browser, and Chrome users are now welcome to join in the Genieo experience and open up to their world of information on this freeway of thinking.
So welcome aboard all Chrome users.
As of today you can have full and easy access to all the information of your personal interest. No more tedious search routines and complicated RSS management, no more having to remember where you saw this or that piece of interesting information, and how on earth to follow up on it…
As of today Genieo can do all of it for you and in a completely automatic environment which requires zero input from you. All you have to do is be there and enjoy it.
Genieo will automatically study your topics of interests and search the web for any specific information accordingly: News, articles, blogs, posts, follow-ups, real time events, and even items from your friends on Facebook and Twitter - all will be filtered according to your own specific individual interests and presented to you on a Homepage Generated especially for you.
Genieo will self register all the RSS feeds of your favorite sources and manage them continually, adapting throughout to your dynamic interests as the change and evolve and all at the highest resolution and level of accuracy.

And if you worry about privacy issues – well don't. Genieo is a desktop application, and as such it manages your entire private data on you own computer, no one has any form of access to it but you.

Now the next great thing is that this entire environment which is basically your personal world of information can be accessible to you from anywhere: over your iPhone, android and any preferred RSS reader of your choice from any computer in the world.

So all you have to do is go to Genieo web site and download the new version of Genieo. On our website you can also find much more information about Genieo and if you miss something then feel free to contact us through the website and you'll be answered shortly.

Well, now that you have it all – Spread your mind and Think Free!

Source: www.soltzvi.com

Most new ideas, however good, take some getting used to.
As a web content provider you know that coming up with great content, developing it as best as possible and launching it with the loudest hoo hah is unfortunately not enough for it work it's magic on the users.  Not immediately anyway.
Users take their time in getting used to new things, explore and understand their numerous yet not always upfront benefits, and in time develop a need for it… so even if you mange to get all the users possible to experience your content, you still have to have means to make them stick to it long enough in order to make them stay and pay.
Stickiness is revenue, and what you need is revenue glue.

Genieo can provide that for you.

According to our statistics, Genieo's personalization platform proves to be a very effective tool in increasing website stickiness. Users are attracted to personalized page content by sheer curiosity and the outstanding results provided by Genieo in form of automatically and accurately filtered web content according to users' specific individual interest seem to work wonders on visitors loyalty and recency as well as maintain low attrition rates.
Statistics show that over three quarters of users return to their Genieo personal Homepage, nearly half using it on a daily basis with an average user viewing time of 1.5 hours – this represents a watershed in terms of website stickiness.

These statistics were acquired using Google Analytics and are based on over 5,000 test case users who installed Genieo’s homepage.
Visitor loyalty stats show that the average user spent 1 hour and 27 minutes connected to their Genieo Homepage, and that in reference to the total amount of visits recorded - 76% of which were returning users while 24% were new visitors.

With respect to recency statistics (measuring the amount of time in between visits), 53% of Genieo users returned to their page on the same day for repeat use, 6.6% returned only once a day, 3.2% returned every two days and 2.6% every three days.  Just 24% visited their page only once.

During March 2010, attrition rate stats showed that only 35% of Genieo users left after the first or second use.  42% of current users are still visiting their page on a daily basis, even after multiple uses.  23.9% visited the site only once, 11% visited just twice, while 7.4% of current users have visited their page 9-14 times; 9% have visited 15-25 times, 10% have visited 51-100 times, and 6.3% have visited 101-200 times.

The nature of Genieo's personalized Homepage, as well as the fact that Genieo is a desktop application which continually updates users with content most important to them, make it become a significant part of their day to day internet experience. Statistics also show that users prefer Genieo’s Homepage to many other personalized homepages distributed by software companies.

So if you've got a new idea and you're looking for way to make it stick and so increase your revenues, Genieo is something you should look into...

Every light, bright or faint, begins with a spark of the freedom of dreaming and courage to believe. That is the difference between the creator and his opposite, the eliminator.

Source: www.soltzvi.com