The Human Powered Search Engine
Christopher “Biz” Stone, co-founder of
Twitter and Medium is in his words trying “un-pivot” his ask and answer startup
Jelly. Jelly is was started in 2012, from Stone’s belief that the future of search
will not be to be thinking up some keywords, getting lots of results, and then
hopefully getting an answer. Instead Jelly will work in ways similar to Quora
or Yahoo Answers, where a person ask questions and then just live their life
until they get their answers. Biz Stone states Jelly is “Helpful answers
for busy people.”
Basically,
Jelly learns which people know what things and it learns what your question is
about. Then, it pairs your question with people who are most likely able to
help you. As a bonus, you can follow up with these real people to get into
specifics, and for those who wonder what about trolls who give answers that are
irrelevant to the questions, Jelly will have a ranking system where people rate
those that give the best questions, and therefore the highest ranking people
will be the ones that have their answers shown.
The
Future of Investing
Chipotle
reported its first quarterly loss on Tuesday, with massive decline in sales,
falling nearly 30%. While many investors was expecting a decline, they were
still caught off guard by the scale of the drop. However there was one company
that was no surprised. Foursquare, the social-media app that allows users to
check in and tell their friends what they are up was able to predict a 29% dip
in Chipotle visits from its users.
This
is the future of investment that many are calling “alternative data”.
Alternative data is where obscure data sets can be turned into tradable
information. Such firms such as RS Metrics which uses satellite images to
examine traffics going into and from stores. RS Metrics was able to predict an
increase in traffic into JC Penny from the amount of vehicles in the parking
lots of the retail store.
As more and more firms begin to adopt the use of "alternative data" it seems that mining raw and unstructured data for investment insights is going mainstream. Investors are hiring data specialists and putting projects in place to make sure they aren't left behind. At some point this "alternative data" won't be so alternative anymore.
As more and more firms begin to adopt the use of "alternative data" it seems that mining raw and unstructured data for investment insights is going mainstream. Investors are hiring data specialists and putting projects in place to make sure they aren't left behind. At some point this "alternative data" won't be so alternative anymore.
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