If that's what's actually happening on the back end, they're doing a pretty bad job with my recommendations. What I suspect is really happening, though, is that the data collection and analytics are being used to optimize revenue, whether it be from advertising, minimizing production costs or ascertaining just how much bullshit users will put up with, and not to build or release higher quality products. That, or the data is sold.
I'd say the reality is even more ironic - they collect so much data and reports, pretending this is to help to improve the user experience, but in the end it makes the experience so much worse.
What other people read/buy/like alone is near useless data. Garbage in, garbage out.
I can't believe people are still trying to wave their hands and pretend they have some amazing algorithm to turn this data into half useful recommendations.
The problem with this data is that it comes from Survata, which is one of those god awful spammy survey walls that makes users fill out a survey before they can access the desired content. When your data comes from being hostile and annoying to users, I don't think it can be trusted.
It very well might be garbage data but if companies are acting on that data it’s still highly problematic. Maybe even worse than if the data were accurate.
Yeah, I can't think of any service that appears to actually do anything useful to me with all the data they've been collecting. Netflix recommendations are awful (one reason I recently canceled my account), Amazon recommendations are pretty hit and miss, YouTube makes some good suggestions but they are dominated by channels I'm either subscribed to or have watched a lot of recently. OkCupid for all their talk of data analytics seemed to have very questionable match percentages. Facebook fails horribly at putting interesting things in my feed. For all the hype around big data and AI there's a serious dearth of really good applications.
Yes, such analysis without data is just BS. I would have liked to see following data:
1. Was snapchat users advertised about this product frequently? If not then its failure in execution right there.
2. What was the conversion rate if they did?
3. Where there any user studies for people who did not convert? What was the distribution of their reasoning? Price, battery life, availability?
4. Was the video/photos uploaded through these glasses carried the advertise for the device itself?
5. What was the influence ratio (friends buying product after one friend bought it)?
The thing is that this idea like most ideas was good but execution probably wasn't. The whole trick behind blockbuster product is to understand failure in execution, fix them and reiterate. Never stop after the failure.
Yep. What was even more bizarre is how they never really acknowledged it might be a problem, they just keep taking this arrogant attitude that the plebe users are wrong and just don't understand this amazing new data feature. It was the first time I recall them using analytics to justify their bullshit, it pretty much set the tone for where we are at now.
As much as I would like to believe you, I cannot. With literally almost every company around me gathering analytics and with every average person's operating system, web browser, social media, phones, televisions, smart locks, smart fridges, graphic card drivers and graphic tablets sending this data out in bulk, you are not going to convince me that the authors of all that software are siphoning data out of us all for nothing.
I'm not sure if you are joking, but that's exactly what they should not be doing. They also can't just go poke around their customer's data. That would be very unwise...
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