I know alot of people think I’ve drunk the Google Kool-Aid … and maybe to a degree I have … however as much as they are a commercial operation, they continually find ways to make a positive difference to the World, which is a damn sight better than most companies who talk a good game but do fuck all about it.
Yes I know they have a lot of money – but you know what, so do alot of companies – the thing is their actions speak louder than their words and as much as they’ve made a few decisions recently that have raised a few eyebrows [changing their restaurant opening times for one, don’t they realise Andy needs his food!!!], their ‘We’re Not Evil’ philosophy bank account is still way in credit.
I think most people who read this blog know about my time being a semi-student and loyal follower of forensic profiler Paul Britton.
Whilst at the time many people thought what I was doing was a big load of wank, with the advent of things like ‘The Undercover Economist’, ‘Tipping Point’ and even ‘CSI’, it is becoming more and more apparent that understanding the background of people’s actions [including cultural influence and ideals] and identifying changes in their behaviour/attitudes can help develop ideas that have more grunt than concepts which have simply focused on key habits of a particular category.
I bring this up because Google have just demonstrated [with a little help from our dear George and the gang] the power of what we like to call, circumstantial evidence.
By creating an algorithm that tracks ‘out of the usual’ searches then grouping them into subjects and ranking them interms of commonality and region/country – Google have stumbled across a way that may be able to identify issues/trends before they take hold.
To demonstrate the idea – even though it was reversed engineered – they looked for, then tracked, any search with terms like ‘cough’, ‘fever’, ‘aches and pains’ in them.
Before long they felt they were able to identify which regions in the US were likely to succumb to the flu bug.
After testing this theory out in 9 US regions, they were able to accurately predict illness upto 14 days before the Federal Centre for Diseases came to the same conclusion.
14 days …
FOURTEEN DAYS …
It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about individuals, communities, companies or economies, that level of advance notice could make quite a difference interms of how badly things are affected.
[You can see the official Google Flu Tracker by going here. Expect more of these ‘early warning/early overcoming’ systems quite soon]
Now I know this methodology seems very obvious … and whilst things like this have been done before [ie: predicting the American Idol winner] … it’s never really been done on this scale or with this purpose before.
Yes I appreciate this is an example of finding an answer then looking for a problem … and yes I know there is also an opportunity to use this information for evil as well as good … but putting that aside, think how many other things may be able to be overcome with this ‘people powered’ approach?
Too many companies look at their data with a single purpose … and whilst that is all fine and good … if you look at it with an open mind, you may just find some information that can give you leads into insights that you never expected … insights that can change your company and your community for the better.
It’s not the devil in the detail, it’s opportunities for the future.