Relevancy of Online Information

Internet, nowadays, is so heavily crowded with Advertisements that it has started somehow to annoy the users. These ads are hardly relevant and the user has to pay to get rid of them. Regardless of the fact that it’s a social forum or search engine, advertizing is everywhere. Everyone is trying to sell you something, either you need it or not.

There have been attempts to refine the advertizing practices in the recent years. The concept of business intelligence has been introduced to make life easier for the users. It creates a virtual profile for every user that contains information like their browsing practices, search history and product preferences. This also makes it easier for the companies to target the right audience and they could limit their marketing effort. Now that was helping the corporations to get better results for their advertisement but the audience was still not too happy with it. It had not helped the users as much as it had promised to. They were still bombarded by ads. The only difference was that the users who actually wanted something had fewer alternatives to pick from. But those with no real need for that item or service were also shown the ads.

Since the popularity of social media and networking sites grew, it became easier to track the user’s personal details via their interactions and activities on these social sites. They do a better job at finding out people’s preferences because they analyze the entire social context while profiling the user and it keeps on updating itself. Now the concern this social relevance operating model raises is of the users’ privacy. People are concerned because their personal information is being used by corporations. Although this has made the decision making process much easier for the individuals there still was a need of system that would increase the relevance without raising any privacy concerns.

That phenomenon is known Contextual Intelligence. It links up the offer with the need perfectly. In other words it empowers the user to filter the information as per their need. For example there is this iPhone App based on the principle of Contextual Intelligence which allows the users to create a Got-List (A list of products or services they have and are willing to offer to whoever may want them) and a Wish-List (A list of things they want). The app helps in matching these lists uploaded by the users and involuntarily informs them if the person sitting next to them has something to offer that they might want. The App is known as Kazoolee and every iPhone users must try it!