Zite-geist
A new type of 'magazine' for the iPad called Zite that learns a reader's habits and personalises their content based upon their interests, has been launched.
The technology was developed at University of British Columbia's Laboratory for Computational Intelligence and offers something a little different to other iPad offerings such as The Daily, Fast Company reported.
The site has clearly played with the new app and said it began personalising content as soon as it was linked to a Twitter account and Google Reader. It apparently analyses feeds to create a bespoke magazine.
"You might get sources you know, you might get content you want from sources you don't know. And yes, you'll occasionally get stories you have no interest in--just tell Zite and it catches on pretty quickly," Fast Company reported.
As a reader skims through articles the app apparently learns their preferences, for example what their particular interests are within a wide field such as social media, or a reader's preferences between news and opinion pieces, big news sites and blogs.
"The more feedback Zite collected, the more personalized it became," said the Fast Company Zite guinea pig.
Zite's CEO Ali Davar said the algorithm is "a combination of semantic- and statistically based machine learning. It works by looking at the articles you click on and the characteristics of those articles. Is the article longer or shorter? Is it skewed toward one element of a topic or another? Is it a political blog? If so, does it have a right- or left-wing slant?"
In a cunning move, readers can reportedly help Zite learn their preferences by flagging up if they enjoyed a particular article, source or topic area. But the magazine app is smarter than that as it can also apparently learn from a reader skipping over news stories or by looking at articles that kept the reader's attention for a longer period of time.
The news will reportedly narrow from generalised themes to specialist areas and Fast Company seems impressed with the app's ability to autosuggest them, writing: "After playing with the app for a week, Zite began featuring "Graphic Design & Typography" as one of my top news sections. Would I have thought to add that category on my own?"
The firm behind Zite apparently claims the app is the first news reader for the iPad "to go beyond manual customization," as other offerings like Flipboard rely on users providing sources themselves.
Davar told the website: "The difference between Flipboard and Zite is that with Zite, your sections are actually personalized. On Flipboard, you pick sections and sources to customize your magazine--that's what they call 'personalized.' But that's really 'customization.' In essence, personalization is a technology--it's something that learns from you. So, for example, your technology section and someone else's will look very different based on your behaviour--rather than being the same generic thing that everyone else is seeing."
In essence, it appears that Zite might just be the editorial equivalent of iTunes' Genius service or Pandora's radio station creator.
