Fountain of truth? (04 Sep 2003)

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Fountain of truth? (04 Sep 2003)
Andrew Tomkins started out applying automated language-analysis techniques to web pages, to try to figure out what they were about. He realised that if this process was applied across billions of web pages-in effect, looking at the entire web at once-it would be possible to spot trends. A new film, for example, might have received terrible reviews from critics, but proved popular among middle-aged women. A new camera model might have some features that are popular, but others that users find too complicated. In short, there might be information hidden on the web that cannot be gleaned from any individual page, but becomes apparent when many pages are examined together. And that information could be of great commercial value.

Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2019861

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