Society - Written Friday, February 27, 2009 by Naumi Haque - 2 Comments

Reality mining: A real life scenario

We often talk about the concept of reality mining, or using technology tools to identify patterns in behaviour. It can be kind of an abstract concept, but opportunities exist for companies to measure, understand, and extract value from all sorts of everyday consumer activities. By learning more about their customers, companies can better inform product decisions, improve marketing, and offer more targeted sales and customer service strategies.

If you want to think about where companies can tap in, just think about the hundreds or thousands of data points you create each and every day. As an example, Alan and I were talking about my last Rogers bill and I just realized that I’m leaving a data trail that any savvy marketer could sniff out from a (virtual) mile away. Privacy concerns aside, if the good folks over at Rogers ever decided to mine my data from the last 30 days or so, it would be pretty easy to decipher what I’ve been up to lately. Consider the following:

• My cell phone was off for almost two days straight, with the exception of a series of call made at random hours of the day to two phone numbers.
• Phone records might reveal those numbers belonged to my parents (easily discernable by last name) and my wife’s parents (maybe not as obvious).
• Triangulation of my cell phone signal during those brief calls would indicate that I was at a hospital.
• Following those two days of cellular silence, there was a flurry of in-bound calls from all over the globe – although few calls were answered.
• About a week later there was a corresponding flurry of outbound calls.
• Additional triangulation of my phone signal might reveal that I was at home the entire time after leaving the hospital (and overall, more home-bound throughout the rest of the month).
• Two weeks later there was a dramatic increase in calls and text messages between me and my wife during work hours.

Any guesses?

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