what is machine learning?
Machine learning can mean many different things (no it's not like THIS!). Although lately Stephen Hawking has been speaking out about AI and suggesting it will be the end of us all... But I digress.
In this article we will discuss Machine learning as it relates to Twitter purchasing Magic Pony - a company developing machine learning technology tailored to images and image processing.
In the advent of social media no one could have anticipated the immense amount of data that would be exchanged in the coming years. It's absolutely staggering how much data is exchanged on a daily basis in the world. With regards to social media, companies like Twitter track and log user interactions, likes, retweets, basically anything and everything it's user's do on it's platform. That is crazy! Think about how many tweets, posts and general interactions there are on a daily basis - billions.
Here's another problem they didn't anticipate: just what the heck are we going to do with all this data? There is no way a team (or an army!) of humans could possibly go through and analyze all this anonymous user date. It's both impossible and down right impractical. In the end Twitter decided basically just to give it to IBM to see if there is anything they could do with it. However, even that has it's limitations. In the end, one thing was clear. Twitter and companies like them needed to change their approach if they wanted to use this data.
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IT'S ALL ABOUT BIG DATA & WHAT TO DO WITH IT
Twitter and other social media platforms knew (and know!) they were (and are!) sitting on a wealth of extremely valuable information on how users use their product. If properly analyzed, that data could be used in turn to improve their products, and help monetize what has been difficult to monetize. This is especially important for a platform like Twitter - where anonymity can make it extremely difficult to target users through ads - the way you really make money in social media. They were sitting on data that could mean billions of dollars for the company, but had no idea how to tap into this data due to the immense amount of resources it would take to accomplish.
IBM GIVES IT A GO
As mentioned earlier in this post - the first solution was basically to give it to IBM as an experiment for large data analysis. This was a great opportunity as IBM was testing out new hardware and software for big computing and artificial intelligence (the Watson project). It was a cool idea, but lacked a clear objective or goal as well as expectations from Twitter. It was more like: "hey IBM, we have all this anonymous user data, can you do anything with it?". It would ultimately prove true that Twitter and other social media companies would need to look even further in the future to find how to tap into this endless amount of data.
Machine learning as a solution
Enter machine learning. Tech Target defines machine learning as this:
"Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can teach themselves to grow and change when exposed to new data."
That's a formal definition, but the concept is this: It's a computer that can adapt on it's own as it crunches through vast amounts of data. What does that mean for social media companies like Twitter? It means a computer program that can begin sorting through the insane amount of data they have almost completely independent of additional programming. It can:
- detect patterns
- develop algorithms
- retool and optimize itself
- output actionable data and analytics
This is all in order to product something they can then use to improve their product. In the end, they get an output of information reporting that is practical, makes sense, and requires minimal effort from an human resource perspective. Essentially, a super computer that can learn is the key to unlocking the value in the endless amount of data they have.
Magic Pony
The recent purchase of Magic Pony by Twitter was just another chapter in the process of using machine learning as a solution. Magic Pony has a specialty in image processing. Since much of what we do on Twitter involves video and images, it's a good place to start. From a big data perspective it also makes sense, as images and video make up the majority of internet traffic in the world. One can imagine how much of Twitter's data images and video make up.
So for $150 million, Twitter continues down the road to using advanced technology to help sift through the immense amount of data in the hopes that some day they may be able to truly tap into the treasure chest of data they possess.
The scoup
For $150 million, Twitter continues down the road to using advanced technology to help sift through the immense amount of data in the hopes that some day they may be able to truly tap into the treasure chest of data they possess.
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