blog.collarity.com

Since first launching Collarity in November of 2006, we’ve conducted hundreds of press interviews. Invariably, the phrase “implicit data” or “implicit behavior” comes up during these discussions as part of the language describing Collarity’s technology or value proposition. The conversation usually goes something like this:

Collarity helps Web publishers create a more positive experience for their web visitors by interpreting “implicit interactions with content and ads” (searching, browsing, ad clicking, etc.) and using the statistical data related to these activities to recommend additional content and to serve more useful advertising.

In order to serve customers more effectively, in any business situation, it’s good to have an idea of what people are looking for — their interests, tastes and preferences. You can ask them directly for “explicit feedback”, but many people have a difficult time articulating how you can help them and it often puts them in an uncomfortable situation. The alternative is to pay attention to what web visitors are paying attention to — their implicit behavioral cues. Web publishers can use this implicit data to avoid starting at square zero when engaging their customers.

We’ve struggled with the term implicit — people don’t like it. It usually slows the conversation down. It often triggers bewildered looks and, even after we explain it, we’re not always sure our explanation is understood.

But now it looks like maybe we won’t have to come up with an alternative phrase. The world, at least in Silicon Valley, is beginning to adopt implicit into its native lexicon.

Last night the Churchill Club, “Silicon Valley’s premier business and technology forum”, held their annual “Top 10 Tech Trends” event — an attempt to predict where technology will take us next. Moderated by Tony Perkins, five of the valleys most prominent venture capitalists (Steve Jurvetson, Vinod Khosla, Josh Kopelman, Roger McNamee, Joe Schoendorf) each weighed in with a number of trend directions. As an added bonus, the audience of about 300 people was allowed to vote “thumbs up” or “thumbs” down with each of the top 10 trend predictions.

So, what was the number one trend that the audience supported? With ninety-five percent of the crowd supporting, it was “the rise of the implicit Internet” and the use of implicit data which was postulated by Josh Kopelman. You can read various accounts of the discussion on VentureBeat, Barron’s, and Kopelman’s blog.