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How Data Analysis is Winning the World Cup

Jesse Jacobsen — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 12:00:11 +0000

As more nations are eliminated and the drama of the World Cup increases, loyal fans and bandwagoners alike are jumping in on the action. World Cup coverage has dominated both sports and social media.

Such massive interest has led to a wave of statistical analysis and predictions. Fans want to know about their team, the chances of winning, how past performance affects the next game, and everything in between. As interested observers consume more information, sports journalists and analysts are finding new ways to break through the noise with unique presentations.

New trends in big data and data analysis are driving this change in information intake, and forward-thinking media outlets are showing just how useful these tools can be. By utilizing the resources available for analysis and visualization, these journalists are illustrating how data can provide new insight. Below, we’ve highlighted a few of the data-driven ways sites have covered the World Cup so far.

Mapping

One of the most shared graphics of US interest in the World Cup is a Twitter volume map of World Cup related activity after John Brooks’ 86th minute goal in the US-Ghana match. As the six-second video shows, twitter erupted in activity across the United States as fans celebrated the unexpected goal from the 19 year-old substitute. This map was created using Cartodb, a cloud-based solution for creating maps based on user data. By calibrating the map to display small dots for any tweet related to the USA-Ghana game, Michael Katz of SB Nation was able to visualize the country’s reaction in real-time. Instead of simply listing statistics or ratings, Michael was able to utilize mapping technology to show US interest in international soccer in a way never before seen.

One day before the World Cup started, the New York Daily News posted an article with a interactive map for finding the best places to watch each game in New York City, tailored to each team. By utilizing Mapbox’s open source platform, the graphic allows fans to find the name, location, and description of a selected venue. To create the popular map, The New York Daily News simply collected existing data and delivered it in a novel, useful way.

Forecasting

Fans are always looking for accurate ways to predict the outcome of a sporting event before it happens. During the 2010 World Cup, a common octopus named Paul made several accurate predictions on match winners, bringing him worldwide attention as an animal oracle. While we no longer have Paul to help us predict the winner of this World Cup (RIP), many sports journalists are utilizing predictive analytics to forecast match outcomes (and generate site traffic).

Before the start of the World Cup, bettingexpert hosted a World Cup Prediction Competition where users made picks on who would win each match and ultimately the World Cup. Bettingexpert analyzed the more than 40,000 submissions in a World Cup Prediction Stats post, where they broke down each teams odds of winning the cup based on public opinion. With relatively simple statistical analysis, bettingexpert drew in huge amounts of site traffic, along with positive press coverage.

FiveThirtyEight, a polling aggregation website and blog created by Nate Silver, has created some of the most popular and informative predictive posts regarding World Cup matches. One day before the start of the World Cup, FiveThirtyEight released a World Cup prediction post including the outcome of every previous World Cup. Performing analytics based on the Elo ratings of each World Cup team before the start of the tournament, Silver’s post shows how this prediction method would have performed compared to the actual outcome for each of the previous World Cups, along with a full analysis of this year’s prediction.

In addition to their initial predictions, FiveThirtyEight created an interactive dashboard where fans can see real time odds of their team advancing in each stage of the World Cup, including the chances of each game ending in a win, loss, or draw. By utilizing data from ESPN’s Soccer Power Index (SPI), FiveThirtyEight is able to calculate the odds of each outcome with probabilities based on 10,000 simulations. Through this post, FiveThirtyEight has made the otherwise overwhelming data accessible to fans, exemplifying the power of visualization.

Companies use these same tactics as well, albeit for different purposes. Applications such as Pentaho and QlikView specialize in predictive analytics, which help companies predict future scenarios, decrease their risk, and increase competitive insight. Pentaho helps businesses discover meaningful patterns inside data sets, much like FiveThirtyEight helps fans see the trends in past World Cup matches. QlikView offers tools for assembling data on the fly to create visualizations and analysis, which function similarly to the interactive game-odds on FiveThirtyEight.

Sporting events like the World Cup contain a wealth of accessible, interesting data. By using tools that turn such data into actionable analysis, journalists increase their competitive advantage and often attract substantial followings. In the same way that businesses can gain competitive market advantages with business intelligence, media outlets are turning towards towards data and visualization to gain their own edge.

See any examples of great data-driven journalism that we missed? Let us know in the comments.

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5 Gamification Companies for Small Businesses

Zach Watson — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 10:00:32 +0000

Gamification Isn’t All About Enterprise

It’s no secret: more businesses are adopting gamification than ever before. But while many of these companies are large enterprises, gamification can work just as well for small businesses and startups.

In fact, the rapidly growing employee-facing aspect of gamification fits perfectly into the unique office culture of startups. Small businesses can also harness gamification to improve customer loyalty with cheaper and more effective reward programs. Marketing divisions as well should view gamification as a huge opportunity to add unique value to campaigns, and give users a more engaging experience.

One of the main reasons small businesses hesitate to explore gamification is the fear that these systems will be expensive, and difficult to introduce. However, the gamification market is becoming more specialized everyday, meaning small business can find affordable, turn-key gamification solutions if they search hard enough.

Actually, they don’t even have to search. We’ve already compiled a list of the top 5 gamification companies for small businesses.

1) OfficeVibe

Keeping employees engaged should be a high priority for any business. But engagement can be a tricky concept: is the goal to make employees happier, more productive, or both? To make the undertaking more difficult, humans are fickle, so the tactic that increases engagement this month may be annoying and repetitive next month. OfficeVibe helps clear up the gray area of engagement with single question surveys that employees take on a weekly basis.

The surveys contain only one question to keep the barrier to completion low, and the frequency is set to once a week so the data stays current and actionable. OfficeVibe also comes equipped with dashboards that present survey results in digestible graphs and charts as well as gamification elements that makes participation more enticing. Results can be segmented by department, enabling an even more specific view of your company’s mood. OfficeVibe makes engagement quantitative, rather than qualitative.

2) Kudos

In an era where attracting talent is paramount to an organization’s success, small businesses and growing companies need a gameplan for keep their employees’ happy. If Officevibe helps engage the office through surveys, Kudos allows organizations to do nearly everything else associated with recognizing and rewarding employees.

Wisely mimicking the set up of popular social media channels, Kudos offers employees and managers a dedicated social media channel they can use to publicly recognize their peers’ hard work. Recognition comes in peer to peer and manager to peer forms, and each time someone’s recognized they receive a certain number of points as decided by the sender.

Kudos also gives you a way to make these points mean something with its rewards feature. Admins can activate different rewards that require different point totals, with the system specifically set up to create gift cards redeemable at restaurants as well as other entertainment venues, though customer rewards can be implemented too.

Like many SaaS systems, Kudos comes in tiered subscription plans, the most expensive of which features human resources functionality. Managers can assign goals and create corresponding badges to awarded when employees meet or exceed said goals.

Kudos has a ton of other functionality, making it more of an engagement operating system as well as a social network for employees.

3) Hull

For businesses with a heavy web presence or a proprietary app, creating an identity management system is an important part of growing your user base. Identity management systems supply businesses with an infrastructure for managing user profiles and gathering behavioral data.

That’s what Hull does for businesses; it helps them construct a unified user profile across all devices. This helps businesses track user actions across websites, social media, and your app. Using data gathered from Hull, businesses can segment users and send targeted push notifications to entice the right behavior.

Hull only requires a user’s email and password for them to sign in, and some users can navigate your app in guest mode. This software also allows for a great deal of customization, with private messaging, comments, likes, votes, followers, credits, and counters all available as social media-esque gamification functionality. Hull even lets businesses contact user segments by email, in-app push notifications, or Facebook notifications.

Hull requires a certain amount of technical expertise, so it’s not for businesses that don’t have any developers. For businesses who do have strong development resources, Hull is less expensive than comparable solutions, and offers a number of compelling features.

4) Ambition

The phrase “If you can’t measure it then you can’t manage it” epitomizes the modern business mindset — particularly from a sales and marketing standpoint. As your organization grows, so will your sales team, creating an urgency to quantitatively track performance in a scalable way.

Branded as a Sales Productivity Suite, Ambition equips you with the means to create meaningful performance metrics while also shifting the work paradigm to feel more like a game. Using the eponymous Ambition Score, which is composed of aggregate performance metrics, this system calculates an employee’s day to day production for your organization. Changes in the Ambition Score over time indicate notable increases in execution or a warning of reductions in output.

To make the software more engaging and collaborative, Ambition can divide employees into fantasy sports style teams and host sales competitions that use cumulative Ambition Scores to choose who wins.

Other gamification elements include a leaderboards specific to job function and department as well as a personalized news feed that congratulates employees on meeting their goals or setting new personal performance benchmarks.

Ambition also offers a great deal more — such as numerous CRM integrations and business intelligence reporting on a revenue level — making it a comprehensive system for motivating your customer-facing teams.

5) Perkville

Perkville is a gamification provider for small businesses that relies on in-person transactions. They supply clients with the means to build loyalty programs, mostly using software that the company already owns. By signing customers up for their loyalty campaign, businesses can track when these customers make purchases through their Point-0f-Sales system and award them points on Perkville. Once customers sign up for Perkville, they can also tell their friends about companies to receive more points.

Of course, these points need to mean something, so businesses can designate rewards in exchange for a certain number of points. Customers can then print out vouchers for these rewards right from Perkville.

Enterprises aren’t the only companies using gamification. With a host of new, affordable solutions, gamification is for small businesses too.

Top Gamification Software Recommendations

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How Project Management Could Have Saved Cover Oregon

Charles Settles — Thu, 20 Mar 2014 13:00:10 +0000

Oregon and Oracle’s much-maligned partnership, the Cover Oregon health insurance exchange, has resulted in little to date except for a broken website, a $160M bill, and a cautionary tale about the importance of project management software.

The management – or mismanagement – of Cover Oregon’s development has been closely watched by those interested in the national healthcare debate. Oregon was one of only a few states that received federal funding as an “early innovator,” and their partnership with Oracle was initially seen as an example for the rest of the country.

In an interview with the Associated Press in the fall of 2012, former Oregon official Carolyn Lawson claimed “the state of Oregon is leading the nation…according to the feds, we’re easily nine months ahead of any other state.” The Cover Oregon website was supposed go live October 1, 2013.

Five months later, Oregonians can download applications online, but according to KATU News, those applications are being processed on paper by over 400 state employees. Oregon is also asking the government for an extension on the March 31 open enrollment deadline.

In an internal report obtained by The Oregonian, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) found that while both parties share blame for the debacle, Cover Oregon’s haphazard project management was cumbersome, difficult, and inconsistent. According to CMS, “there is no dedicated Project Manager…no integrated project schedule” and, “…little, or no, ability to escalate [information] to the Cover Oregon leadership team.”

CMS found that in addition to not having a dedicated project manager, “Cover Oregon is not employing…any mainstream project management tool,” and was instead relying upon an assortment of Microsoft Office tools to track issues and progress.

Any good project manager knows that large assignments (say, the roll-out of a state health insurance exchange) require accountability and oversight – two things that Cover Oregon’s team sorely lacked. No project manager ever wants their process to be described as cumbersome, difficult, or inconsistent.

CMS’s findings prove that good project management software can help provide the transparency and communication required to successfully implement a project of any size.

In short, had Oregon given a project manager clear authority over the involved agencies, and used a quality project management solution, they might have been touting a technological victory, rather than a debacle.

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Top 5 Women in Gamification

Charles Settles — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 08:00:21 +0000

The Most Influential Women in Gamification

Listing the top five women in gamification is no easy task. As the industry has grown, many women have played influential roles, and many more are currently helping to expand the field. The logic behind these choices is not based on the same social rankings used for Leaderboarded’s Top 40 Gamification Gurus, although their list is a good place to start.

These women are gamification thought leaders, accomplished authors, executives, entrepreneurs, and academics. Some of them are helping to develop the next generation of gamification platforms, while others continue to influence the field through their insights into business, consumers, and game design. In no particular order, we present the five most influential women in gamification.

Jane McGonigal

Ask anyone about the first time they heard of the concept of gamification. Odds are, it was during Jane McGonigal’s 2010 TED talk titled: “Gaming can make a better world“. McGonigal’s TED talk marked one of gamification’s first introductions to mainstream culture. However, it is far from her only accomplishment.

She has a B.A. in English from Fordham University, and a Ph.D in performance studies from the University of California- Berkeley. She serves on the board of directors for Games For Change, a non-profit that facilitates the creation and distribution of social impact games in order to leverage entertainment for social good.

She has received numerous awards and accolades including a spot in O Magazine’s top 20 most inspiring women in the world, Harvard Business Review’s Top 20 Breakthrough Ideas, and Gamasutra’s Top 20 Women in Videogames. In 2011, she wrote the New York Times bestselling book: Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.

Addtionally, she is an accomplished game designer who has had a part in the creation of at least 14 games. Her latest is SuperBetter, a game designed to help sufferers of depression, anxiety, chronic pain, traumatic brain injuries, or just those who want to feel better. It is a perfect example of McGonigal’s belief that games are not just entertainment. She believes a game with a large enough audience can reinvent the world and improve the lives of millions. It is that belief that drives McGonigal. One day, she hopes a game developer will be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mary Flanagan

Mary Flanagan might not appear on Leaderboarded’s social list of gamification gurus, but do not let that fool you. What she may lack in social media self-promotion, she more than makes up for in concrete accomplishments.

She received her B.A. in film from the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee before attending the University of Iowa for both an M.A. and M.F.A. Then she capped her student career off with a Ph.D. in computational media and game design from the Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London. She currently works as a professor at Dartmouth College, where she holds an endowed chair in digital humanities, and teaches courses in film and media studies.

In addition to teaching students at Dartmouth, she’s also found the time to write four books: the soon-to-be released Values at Play in Digital Games (MIT Press, 2014), Critical Play, re:skin, and Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. Not satisfied with just academic and editorial endeavors, Flanagan is the founder of Tiltfactor, a game research laboratory focused on social, urban, and theory software, mostly in the form of “serious games.” While “serious games” are not gamification in the strictest sense of the word, the insights gained from Flanagan’s research into play have influenced both game and gamification designers worldwide.

Nicole Lazzaro

Nicole Lazzaro is the founder and president of XEODesign, a game-inspired design and research firm. Even though she’s been recognized as one of Gamasutra’s top 20 women in videogames, and Fast Company’s 100 most influential women in technology, she seems less concerned with social ranking and more concerned with using her Stanford psychology degree for research and development.

The importance of Lazzaro’s research was noted by Chris Bateman, the author of 21st Century Game Design, who said in a testimonial: “It would be impossible to overestimate the extent to which Nicole Lazzaro’s research has contributed to a better understanding of play in the context of videogames.” Bateman was likely referring to Lazzaro’s research on the Four Keys to Fun, a series of videos, graphics, white papers, and presentations on how to increase engagement with play. Her groundbreaking research linked players’ facial expressions with their game experience, giving invaluable insight into emotions. The work has influenced both game designers and gamification platforms.

Lazzaro’s numerous contributions to the field extend to academia as well, with chapters in the following textbooks: Beyond Game Design: 9 Steps Toward Creating Better Videogames, Game Usability: Advancing the Player Experience, Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming, and The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook.

Wanda Meloni

Wanda Meloni’s work in consulting and analysis landed her on our list. She is the founder and senior analyst at M2 Research, a company that specializes in research, forecasting, and market analysis for the games industry.

Much of the innovation in gamification today is a result of the statistical research produced by groups such as M2 Research. Without relevant data on gaming and gamers, gamification would be nothing but guesswork. Meloni’s credentials include an M.B.A. from the Monterey Institute of International Studies, over 20 years experience as a consultant/analyst, and four years as editor-in-chief of Gaming Business Review.

She has also written for, or been quoted in, publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the New York Times, Fortune, and others. Before founding M2 Research, Meloni was the president of DFC Intelligence, a strategic market research and consulting firm for the gaming industry. She began her career as an analyst for John Peddie Research, a tech-oriented consulting, marketing, and research firm.

Katie Salen

Rounding out our list of influential women is Katie Salen. Salen began her career focused on the visual aspects of game design, and earned her B.A. in fine arts from the University of Texas. She went on to get an M.F.A. in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design.

She spent over 10 years designing games, during which time she worked for numerous companies, including Gamelab. Gamelab’s mission, to invent new ways to play, had obvious influence on many former employees who began careers in gamification, including Salen. In 2007, Salen and several other former Gamelab employees founded the Institute of Play as a non-profit design studio. In 2008, the Institute opened what would become one of their most successful programs – Quest to Learn. It was a new type of public school with a curriculum that used game elements to create highly-engaging learning experiences for students. The model has proven so successful that its second iteration, CICS ChicagoQuest, opened in 2011.

In addition to her groundbreaking work in education design, Salen is a professor at DePaul University, where she teaches courses in computing and digital media. She’s also found time to co-author or edit two books: Rules of Play, and The Game Design Reader. In 2010, she received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from Bank Street College, NYC.

Honorable mentions to this list include: Monica Cornetti, An Coppens, Amy Jo Kim, Margaret Wallace, and Marigo Raftopoulos.

Agree with our selections? Want to suggest some other names? Let us know in the comments!

Top Gamification Software Recommendations

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What Gamification Gurus Are Made Of

Cameron Graham — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 08:00:30 +0000

Every month online-engagement firm Leaderboarded produces a list of the Top 40 Gamificaton Gurus. Their algorithm draws on Klout scores, twitter followers, and other factors to find the most credible voices in gamification. It’s a great resource, but we wanted to know even more about these experts. So we took Leaderboarded’s February list, gathered data on all the individuals, and broke it down. Check out these seven charts to find out what exactly the typical gamification guru looks like:

Gamification and brains seem to go hand-in-hand. All of the top 40 gurus have at least one college degree, and many possess advanced degrees in their field. 39% hold a bachelor’s degree as their highest education. 23% have MBAs. 10% hold a master’s degree, while a whopping 19% have a PhD. While there weren’t any significant trends in their choices of study, it did turn out that Bachelor of Arts degrees were more common than Bachelor of Science degrees.

Unsurprisingly, the largest share of gamification experts are employed in different gamification companies. The second most represented field is Information Technology and Services (IT), which accounts for 17%. Consulting, meanwhile, was cited by 12% of gurus as their primary field. A few unexpected industries that make an appearance are Broadcast Media, Education Management, and Design, all of which have just a single representative.

Out of the top 40 gurus, 45% live in the US. The country with the second highest concentration of gamification experts is Spain, where 17% of the list live. 15% of gamification experts reside in the UK. When we looked closer at the U.S., it turned out that out of the 18 experts who live there, eight live in California, and six in San Francisco. That makes San Francisco the most represented city, and the one place in the world where you’re most likely to find one of the top 40 gamification gurus.

While the number of women in gamification is growing, the top of the field is still dominated by men. Of Leaderboarded’s list, only five of the top 40 gurus were female. Men represented 87% of the list.

The vast majority of gamification gurus are white, representing 70% of the top 40 spots. 17% of the gurus were Spanish, while Asian-Americans made up 7% of the list. Interestingly, this broadly matches the breakdown of computer programmers in the US – a 2008 survey by the Population Reference Bureau found that the industry was about 72% white¹.

Judging by this sample, gamification gurus are a highly enterprising group. 46% of the top 40 gurus are entrepreneurs, while 54% work for an established company or university. Just 13% of the entire US workforce is made up of entrepreneurs², suggesting gamification is a prime field for innovation and growth.

If we took the statistically largest factor from each category, and assembled it into the average gamification guru, they would be a white male with a bachelor’s degree who works in Gamification, lives in the United States, and is employed at a company. This picture will surely shift. As gamification expands into new industries, and continues to gain traction as a workplace policy, the above demographics should change as well.

________

Sources:

1. www.prb.org/pdf08/scientistprofiles/occprof08_computrprogram.pdf

2. http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2013/05/27/u-s-entrepreneurship-hits-record-high/

Notes:

All information was gathered by TechnologyAdvice from publicly available material.
The individual names from the Top 40 Gamification Gurus list were taken from Leaderboarded on February 25, 2014.
We were unable to locate educational information for two individuals listed in Leaderboarded’s Top 40 Gamification Gurus list for February. The chart provided therefore has a sample size of 38, instead of 40. This is the only chart with incomplete information.
One of Leaderboarded’s Top 40 Gamification Gurus in February was an online company account. We elected to delete this account from our research, and instead moved the 41st ranked person into the Top 40 to compensate for this.

Top Gamification Software Recommendations

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Microsoft Power BI Makes Business Intelligence Easy

Zach Watson — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 18:25:50 +0000

Microsoft’s New Business Intelligence Application Adds Data Analytics to Excel

Microsoft recently announced the launch of Power BI, a platform that equips employees with intuitive tools for finding, sorting, sharing, and ultimately understanding business intelligence.

According to a 2013 SAP survey of businesses in the US and UK, 75% of enterprises report their staff doesn’t have the necessary skills to adequately leverage the data their company produces. It looks like Microsoft was paying attention.

By working through the Excel interface, Power BI cleverly builds on a program users are already familiar with. This might help address the big data disparity between enterprises and small and medium businesses. Rather than investing in a data analysis expert, smaller organizations could use Power BI instead.

Power BI’s integration with SAP BusinessObjectives provides additional reach for its Power Query function. By connecting employees to data at different locations, Power BI helps users consolidate business data, eliminating the redundancy of copy-and-pasting information from disparate spreadsheets. Power BI’s SAP integration also gives users access to public data sets, in order to expand their sample sizes, and improve their analysis.

Once users find the data they’re looking for, Power BI they can visualize it with the Power Pivot tool, which renders data into aesthetically pleasing models. Further visual functionality includes Power View and Power Map, the latter of which represents data based on geographic parameters.

Power BI is available as an add-on to Microsoft Office or as a standalone product. Mobile access is currently available through an app for Windows Mobile, with more platforms to follow.

Microsoft’s move to simplify business intelligence analytics looks like a smart one. Though the number wasn’t as high as SAP’s survey, InformationWeek’s Business Intelligence survey reported that 47% of businesses cited lack of expertise as a primary big data concern. 67% of respondents reported being interested in using advanced data analytics.

Will Power BI make Excel the new data analytics hub? Share some knowledge in the comments.

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Badgeville Clients Get +10 to Design With Visualize

Zach Watson — Fri, 21 Feb 2014 21:53:05 +0000

Badgeville Visualize Gives Clients Greater Design Freedom

To help marketers and business managers more easily add gamification elements to mobile, web, and enterprise applications, Badgeville released Visualize yesterday, a widget comprised of pre-constructed gamification components as well as a toolkit for additional customization.

Designed for use with Badgeville’s Behavior Platform, Visualize’s value to marketers lays in its pre-configured library, which allows clients to implement gamified visual assets without having to write server-side code.

Visualize’s library includes profiles, cards, and head elements for players as well as mission progress representations, mission tutorial interfaces, and notifications. These game graphics are all built on modern web standards and feature responsive design, so they automatically size to fit screen proportions.

In addition, Visualize features Badgeville’s Javascript SDK, which lets developer’s edit the HTML and Javascript source code. And if developers aren’t satisfied with the options in Visualize’s library, Badgeville’s new widget lets them create their own elements. To help clients better integrate player points, rewards, and leaderboard rankings, Visualize includes data on the HTML page so developers can style feedback mechanisms.

Gamification is quickly becoming the go-to solution for increasing engagement and inspiring motivation across industries. Research firm Gartner predicts 50 percent of companies managing innovative processes will add gamification by 2015, meaning platforms like Badgeville are invaluable to businesses searching for proven gamification methods.

Badgeville’s notable clients include American Express, Oracle, Samsung and Philips Electronics. Badgeville specializes in designing and implementing game mechanics, reputation mechanics, and social mechanics for marketing and engagement campaigns.

Read more about Badgeville’s offerings, or compare them to other gamification companies using the Gamification Software Product Selection Tool!

Top Gamification Software Recommendations

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Fire Destroys Iron Mountain Data Warehouse in Buenos Aires

Cameron Graham — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 20:33:59 +0000

Storage and information management firm Iron Mountain has lost one of its main data centers today, according to the Associated Press. Although it’s unclear how the fire started, it spread quickly and took hours to control. Nine first-responders were killed during the blaze, while two are missing, and seven others are reported injured. By the time the fire was put out, the building “appeared to be ruined” according to news reports.

The data center was located in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. Among the data stored there were several archives containing corporate and central bank records, a potentially huge loss that could have some surprisingly far reaching consequences. Just last month, for instance, the United States Supreme Court decided to hear a case on whether creditors could seek historic bank records from Argentina regarding the country’s default in 2001. Whether or not such files have now been destroyed is unknown.

Such disasters are one of the things data storage companies like Iron Mountain try their hardest to prevent. The Buenos Aires facility even had a team of private firefighters at the facility. That’s in addition to the sprinkler systems, and automatic containment mechanisms designed to stop fires from spreading through the building. All of those precautions, however, were apparently not enough.

Although the main page of their website contains no mention of the fire, Iron Mountain did post a statement to their company news page, writing:

We will investigate the cause of the fire and work closely with local investigators, police and fire authorities to understand what happened. The building was equipped with both fire-detection as well as a sprinkler system.

They also note that they are in the process of contacting customers who may have permanently lost data. Argentina’s Security Secretary Sergio Berni was quoted by the Washington Post as saying that “all of this will end up in court,” although it’s unclear exactly which parties and circumstances he was referring to.

Update 2/6/14: According to local reports, it appears that the storage facility this occurred at was primarily used to store physical, paper records, not digital data. Iron Mountain has yet to release any further statements on the issue, so it’s unclear if there are any digital copies of these records. There is no mention of backup copies however in either Iron Mountain’s original press release, or in any of the statement’s from Argentine officials.

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Company Review Site TrustPilot Recieves $25M in Financing

Cameron Graham — Mon, 13 Jan 2014 20:20:00 +0000

Last week we wrote about social review site Yotpo, which specializes in helping companies generate real product reviews. While Yotpo is focused on individual items or services, new startup TrustPilot wants to be the authority on the retailers themselves. Today, they received $25M in Series C financing to help expand those efforts, according to VentureBeat.

TrustPilot’s website allows customers to search for online retailers and read customer reviews, or write their own (sort of like Yelp, but for websites). In 2012, the company reported having over seven million reviews, for around 100,000 sites. While the service is entirely free to users, TrustPilot does charge brands for extra features or promotion. Companies that opt to pay, including sites like Travelocity and LastMinute.com, receive extra promotion on the site, and can require that user’s enter a valid Order ID# before submitting a review.

While there are a few other sites offering similar service, such as ResellerRatings or TrustedCompany, TrustPilot is by far the most popular. The company was started in Denmark in 2007, and is now the most used website in the country, according to Alexa.com. One of the main reasons for their popularity is likely their licensing agreement with Google, which lets them display their ratings on Google’s paid search results. According to Google, ads with such seller ratings next to them have a 17% higher CTR than ones without them.

One of the most difficult aspects of maintaining an online review site is weeding out fake or malicious users. To combat this, TrustPilot relies primarily on companies’ actual customers. When a company signs up with TrustPilot, they provide them with the email addresses of anyone who makes a purchase on their site. TrustPilot then uses these lists to solicit reviews, hopefully ensuring that at least a large portion of the site’s content comes from verified shoppers. In order to otherwise post a review, a user has to confirm their identity through Facebook or email.

Given the sales benefits, and SEO advantages of online reviews, the market for such content should only keep growing. Whether or not TrustPilot will be able to hold on to their early lead remains to be seen.

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How Netflix is Using Big Data to Get People Hooked on its Original Programming

Andrew Hirsh — Sat, 07 Sep 2013 15:16:00 +0000

Prior to releasing its exclusive shows House of Cards and Arrested Development, Netflix made the decision to heavily promote both programs — pouring millions of dollars into TV, print and online advertising. Thanks to tremendous storytelling and strong marketing campaigns, each show proved to be a massive success.

But when Netflix prepared to roll out its third original series, Orange is the New Black, they didn’t build it up nearly as much as they did for its predecessors. In fact, outside of a few commercials, they barely marketed it at all.

And yet, Orange is the New Black garnered more viewings in its first week than House of Cards and Arrested Development.¹

OITNB didn’t have the star power of Netflix’s other shows; nor did it have much momentum leading up to its release. So how, exactly, did it do so well?

The answer: big data.

Truth is, Netflix didn’t have to market OITNB, a show about a woman who is sent to jail for a crime she committed more than a decade earlier. Thanks to Netflix’s in-depth audience studies and design strategies, company executives knew its users would watch the dark comedy regardless of whether or not they heard about it elsewhere.

By using comprehensive big data analysis that far exceeds those of its competitors, Netflix is able to investigate what its 30 million-plus subscribers enjoy. Here are some of the ways they break the info down:

Track what goes on in the movies themselves (i.e. plot, genre, character development)
Capture JPEGs of video to analyze color, tone, scenery and any other visuals that may indicate what the users like
Study what volume levels are used for certain programs
Note every time users rewind, fast forward and pause films
Analyze the audiences’ geo-location data
Chart what kind of devices are being used to run Netflix
Pay attention to what time of day and week certain programs are watched (it now can verify that users watch more TV shows during the week and more movies during the weekend)
Research social media data and metadata from third parties such as Nielsen¹

Kate Epstein of CounterPunch.org explains how this data can be applied, using House of Cards as an example:

This information has long dictated what content Netflix decides to license and recommend to different viewers, but “House of Cards” was the first time any company had ever used such data in the creative production process for a T.V. show. It started when Netflix noticed that there was significant overlap between the circles of viewers who watched movies starring Kevin Spacey and movies directed by David Fincher from beginning to end, and viewers who loved the original 1990 BBC miniseries “House of Cards.” Subscribers were shown one of ten different trailers for the series based on their consumer profiles. The producers also knew, from studying viewers’ watching patterns, that releasing all thirteen episodes at once would promote and reward the binge-like behavior demonstrated by their target audience. The new strategy paid off, with ten percent of Netflix subscribers watching the series within two weeks of its debut, and 80% of viewers rating it “good” or “exceptional.”2

The same approach was used with OITNB. Before the show blossomed, researchers came to understand that a high percentage of Netflix’s users enjoyed 1) dark comedies, 2) plots revolving around prison/crime, and 3) a likable female lead. Those three factors rarely combined in the same recipe, but blending them together proved to create a fantastic, one-of-a-kind program.

But here’s the key to Orange is the New Black’s success: Netflix came to understand that roughly 75 percent of its views come purely from its recommendation section, which is displayed at the top of site’s homepage. To create this, analysts used the aforementioned data to put together an extremely accurate recommendation system unlike any other in the industry:

So Netflix had an epiphany. They didn’t have to market Orange is the New Black — people who would like the series would naturally see and choose to watch it. Given the show’s premise and the audience’s taste in TV, Netflix knew hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people would get hooked.

And they did.

* * *

So how does all this apply to your business? Well, it means that embracing big data analysis can not only be a more cost-efficient alternative to traditional marketing, but it can be far more effective, as well. Even if you want to maintain your advertising practices, using new-age data analysis can help you mold your next product(s) the way Netflix has done.

Coming soon: Technology Advice’s Big Data Smart Advisor tool — helping you find which big data company is right for you.

^Sources:
^{1. Harris, Derrick. 25 July, 2013. “A Netflix, big data can affect even the littlest things.”}
^{2. Epstein, Kate. 17 July, 2013. “The Brave New World of Big Data.”}

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