Persistence

Measuring the persistence of the behaviour of users on the internet is a serious opportunity that has yet to be properly exploited.

What sort of behaviours?

Well, we peek at emails, open up a specific sports page, travel to work in a specific way, gawk at rubbish on social media, etc.

Google Now operates by the use of persistent behaviour but in this instance I think Google has taken the wrong tack.

They are measuring persistent behaviour and using it to serve up curated content on Google Now. Their hope is that Google Now eventually becomes your personal digital assistant.

They would be far better off opening up the persistent data to app developers who would then find all sorts of interesting ways to use it.

At the end of the day I suspect we will all be able to be reliably pigeon-holed into groups of persistent behaviors.

And then there will be an opportunity for the dice merchants that can sell us the how-to’s of being inconsistent and thereby lacking persistence.

Another prediction; there will be an arms race between persistence and inconsistence.

After which we will disappear up our own orifices thereby making way for the automatons to rule in response to their pure disgust at our facile ways.