UNDERSTANDING DATA AND HOW IT’S USED
RICHARD CONWAY HIGHLIGHTS SOME ONLINE APPS PEOPLE USE, AND HOW THEY CAN IMPACT THEIR BUSINESS.
This month Richard Conway highlights some online apps people use, and how they can impact their business.
O ur touchpoints with the online world are continuously growing. What started with a myriad of companies all providing different services and each acting on their own accord, has now become a web of features and applications that all interconnect and share data.
Think about the number of touchpoints you have with a company such as Google or Apple. Google is no longer just for search, it’s used for emails, voice activation, planning and scheduling, among other things. Each application collects information to create a bigger picture of who you are and what you are interested in. Google can even tell you what you want to know before you even know what you want.
So, what exactly is collecting data and what data is being collected? We’ve outlined a few daily applications that you likely use, and how they could impact your business.
1. Search
Data fuels artificial intelligence. There are features of Google such as RankBrain that help to deliver Google’s search results. Although it is not a true form of artificial intelligence, RankBrain has the capacity to teach itself from raw data, connecting previous searches and search results. Search engines also have the ability to pick up key words and present them in results. That’s one reason why it can be a great tool to use when recruiting – though some countries have laws around this method to protect privacy.
Just remember that whatever you search can potentially be stored and used to target advertising!
2. Social media
Social networks are created based on public content creation. Whatever is outwardly publicised can be seen by a wide audience if privacy settings are not set to private. Sites such as Facebook encourage their users to share their information, including date of birth, address and phone numbers, which can then be used to help businesses create targeted advertising.
Third party sources are able to access some user information from social media through a few methods, including search engines (as mentioned above), third party sharing (think Farmville and Quiz Planet where you have to accept their terms), and application programming interface (API) – which are set requirements that govern how one application can talk to another that in turn make it possible for services to allow other apps to ‘piggyback’ on their offerings. For example, Yelp will display nearby restaurants on Google Map in its