The Bright Side of Being Watched

What are the most used apps on your phone?  Facebook?  Snapchat?  Instagram?  Netflix?  Spotify?  All of these companies use the data you leave behind to make your life better.  How you might ask?  By tracking the data and doing an analysis to make your user experience much more personalized.  Between A.I., predictive analytics, and big data, this has all lead to machine learning and the personalized experience.  Netflix can serve you up new shows based on your previous viewing patterns and a/b testing, which you can read about here.  Spotify focuses heavily on analyzing their user’s listening data.  They do this to then be able to make recommendations to new artists or playlists that you would statistically enjoy.  There is more detail about their data listening habits here.

What is my point?  That we’re all constantly being watched?  Well, yes and no.  My point is that there is a huge fear from people about their data being collected all over the internet and on every site they use.  I always hear “I don’t want people watching what I’m doing” (firstly, that makes me question what they’re doing) but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  By these companies collecting our data, its actually making our lives a bit easier.  It takes the decision making process out of small things in life that one typically doesn’t want to have to worry about with all the big decisions to make in life.  And it is also making our user experience much, much better.  Between new recommendations and seeing ads that are more relevant to us, it can be a positive and not-so-scary thing.