What is Insights?

• Is there a way to correctly determine what the top 10 blenders are for making smoothies ?
• We have pondered over this question, and the correct answer is no, for a variety of reasons. First, rarely do you come across someone who has tried using 10 blenders. Second, even if you did come across someone who has, his/her opinions are just that, from a sample size of one. So then, we posed a slightly different question: is there a way to assist users when they are looking to purchase a top-notch blender for making smoothies. We feel this is doable and is exactly what we have set out to do with 'Insights'.
• What really is 'Insights'?
• Insights is a 3-tier system that bubbles up top-notch products for a given task or function, eg. 'Best Blenders for making Smoothies'. The base tier consists of an Insights-Extraction system, which as its name suggests, extracts key insights from reviews of users who have used these products. This gives us products that are good for a given task or function. The middle tier is a normalization and ranking tier called TopRank. This is used to rank products obtained from the base tier. The normalization layer factors in product level parameters like how buyers have rated a product, the number of times buyers have rated a product, how well a product has sold, as well as how a product's price is trending. The top tier (currently in development) is user-voting and editorial oversight.
• What exactly is extracted out by the Insights-Extraction System?
• Each product has a number of functional (eg. blenders for making smoothies) and non-functional (eg. blenders that are durable) facets. Knowledge about these facets is usually present in buyers' reviews, but it is buried and not easy to get to. Also it is not unusual for a product to have have a large number (from the tens to hundreds) of buyers' reviews, making it very difficult for users to discern and absorb the knowledge nuggets embedded deep within them. The Insights-Extraction System extracts these key knowledge nuggets.
• How did Wowzio develop Insights?
• We recently launched 'Pulse', where we analyse blog posts, and extract out the key ideas in them. Insights was a natural offshoot of the 'Pulse' effort, one key difference being that in Insights we analyse buyers' reviews.
• Do you only analyse buyers' reviews in Insights?
• Yes. But we are also planning to analyse blog posts for Insights, as we believe that blog posts often contain key insights into products. If you have a blog post about a product, and would like to participate in Insights, please drop a line to insights [at] wowzio [dot] com .
• I see some problems with Insights, what should I do?
• Insights is in alpha. Please help us by emailing us at insights [at] wowzio [dot] com , and provide us with details.