Referral engines and sites based on user behavior create profiles of individuals that determine the types of web pages people view.
Venture Beat took a look at Magnify today, one of the latest services to create user profiles to help companies create higher returns on individual visits to a web site. In previous stories on these types of companies, VentureBeat has referred to Yankee Group information (see image) that proclaims the future is in recommending products and services based on an individual profile. Venture Capitalists seem to think so, too. In a post by Don Dodge and one in CNET, venture capitalists are looking at companies that are…”making sense of all the data people create around the Web, and then searching for patterns in the data to improve the delivery of personalized content, search results, or advertising.”
And from today’s VentureBeat:
But a Los Angeles, Calif., company called Magnify360 is part of a wave of new companies helping sites transform themselves more radically. Magnify lets web site owners gather information about what you do at a site, and draws conclusions about the type of person you are — things like how deep a reader you are (do you skim, or do you reading longer features?), how much money you like spending (frugal or not?), and whether you’re a conservative or style shopper (Ford Explorer or Porsche?). Then, when you visit again, it then changes the content at the site to cater to those tastes.
I don’t want to sound preachy so I’ll pose this as a question. Isn’t this the future of the web and commerce? Sites are looking for higher conversions based on the personal profiles of individuals. Isn’t it just a matter of time before the majority of sites adopt these types of technologies so they can make more from their online store, generate leads for their insurance services or better understand what type of manufacturing equipment a purchasing manager is looking to buy?
And if these pages change so often, how will people adjust? How will their behaviors change? How can they make sure that what they see on a site will be there the next time they visit? How can they send actual pages to people so they may see them?
From our perspective, trends in personalization will further advance archiving. It will grown in importance for the user and the commercial provider. Users can’t change how the behavior and referral engines work. But they can save web pages and email or share with friends and colleagues. That’s the role iterasi plays. People who see a page that they know they want to access again, can do so by archiving it. They have the comfort that the page will become part of their personal web archive. It is in their library where they can always access it. They can email those pages to friends or share them across the web.
The web site owner will also have tools at their disposal to archive personal web histories and experiences. They can even use archiving as a service for customers so they may archive a product page for later reference. Additionally, services like travel sites often have dynamic pages where prices change on the fly. Emailing a page doesn’t work as the content changes so fast. Archiving provides a way for those customers to send deals to friends and family.
Both the business and the user will adopt. Behavioral targeting will grow in popularity as will archiving tools for users and commercial entities.
Now start thinking of the relevance of all these saved pages. I’ll save that thought for another time. :-)
