The Tendo View

While listening to Marketplace on my way home last night, I heard an interesting interview with Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist at Amazon.com. In describing what he does, Weigend says, “I study people and the data they create.” Sounds like a pretty modest description for a Ph.D. with his expertise. He didn’t say it, but I’m pretty sure he’s the brains behind Amazon’s famous customization features, like the “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” and its Wish List.

Weigend was on the show to discuss “the social data revolution,” a phrase he apparently coined for the social media phenomenon in which people share data with friends (Facebook), the world (Twitter), and companies they do business with (Amazon).

What interested me about the interview was how Weigend defines companies in relation to social data. There are two types. Some companies, like Amazon, embrace social data and enable “explicit data creation.” They do this by creating incentives for customers to share information with them. Amazon’s Wish List is a great example of this. More traditional companies, on the other hand, embrace “implicit data creation,” whereby they “sniff the digital exhaust” of their customers, hoping to infer their preferences, interests, and so on.

After thinking about the success of Amazon and the enormity of the social media (or data, whichever you prefer) phenomenon, it seems crazy not to embrace explicit data creation with your customers. But maybe I’m wrong; perhaps there’s a reason to just “sniff digital exhaust.” You can hear the interview or read a transcript online.