A content discovery platform is an implemented
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
recommendation
platform
Platform may refer to:
Technology
* Computing platform, a framework on which applications may be run
* Platform game, a genre of video games
* Car platform, a set of components shared by several vehicle models
* Weapons platform, a system ...
which uses
recommender system
A recommender system, or a recommendation system (sometimes replacing 'system' with a synonym such as platform or engine), is a subclass of information filtering system that provide suggestions for items that are most pertinent to a particular ...
tools. It utilizes user
metadata in order to discover and recommend appropriate content, whilst reducing ongoing maintenance and development costs. A content discovery platform delivers personalized content to
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...
s,
mobile device
A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...
s and
set-top boxes. A large range of content discovery platforms currently exist for various forms of content ranging from news articles and
academic journal
An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and ...
articles
to television. As operators compete to be the gateway to home entertainment, personalized television is a key service differentiator. Academic content discovery has recently become another area of interest, with several companies being established to help academic researchers keep up to date with relevant academic content and serendipitously discover new content.
Methodology
To provide and recommend content, a
search algorithm
In computer science, a search algorithm is an algorithm designed to solve a search problem. Search algorithms work to retrieve information stored within particular data structure, or calculated in the Feasible region, search space of a problem do ...
is used within a content discovery platform to provide keyword-related search results. User
personalization
Personalization (broadly known as customization) consists of tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific individuals, sometimes tied to groups or segments of individuals. A wide variety of organizations use personalization to improv ...
and recommendation are tools that are used in the determination of appropriate content. Recommendations are either based on a single article or show, a particular academic field or genre of TV, or a full
user profile
A user profile is a collection of settings and information associated with a user. It contains critical information that is used to identify an individual, such as their name, age, portrait photograph and individual characteristics such as ...
. Bespoke analysis can also be undertaken to understand specific requirements relating to user behaviour and activity.
A variety of algorithms can be used:
*
Collaborative filtering
Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...
of different users' behaviour, preferences, and ratings.
* Automatic
content analysis
Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...
and
extraction of common patterns.
* Social recommendations based on personal choices from other people.
Academic content discovery
An emerging market for content discovery platforms is academic content Approximately 6000 academic journal articles are published daily, making it increasingly difficult for researchers to balance time management with staying up to date with relevant research.
Though traditional tools academic search tools such as
Google Scholar
Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...
or
PubMed
PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain ...
provide a readily accessible database of journal articles, content recommendation in these cases are performed in a 'linear' fashion, with users setting 'alarms' for new publications based on keywords, journals or particular authors.
Google Scholar provides an 'Updates' tool that suggests articles by using a
statistical model
A statistical model is a mathematical model that embodies a set of statistical assumptions concerning the generation of sample data (and similar data from a larger population). A statistical model represents, often in considerably idealized form, ...
that takes a researchers' authorized paper and citations as input.
Whilst these recommendations have been noted to be extremely good, this poses a problem with early career researchers which may be lacking a sufficient body of work to produce accurate recommendations.
Television
As the connected television landscape continues to evolve, search and recommendation are seen as having an even more pivotal role in the discovery of content.
The New Face of TV
/ref> With broadband
In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...
-connected devices, consumers are projected to have access to content from linear broadcast sources as well as internet television
Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-ai ...
. Therefore, there is a risk that the market could become fragmented, leaving it to the viewer to visit various locations and find what they want to watch in a way that is time-consuming and complicated for them. By using a search and recommendation engine, viewers are provided with a central 'portal' from which to discover content from several sources in just one location.
See also
* Filter bubble
A filter bubble or ideological frame is a state of intellectual isolationTechnopediaDefinition – What does Filter Bubble mean?, Retrieved October 10, 2017, "....A filter bubble is the intellectual isolation, that can occur when websites make us ...
* Information filtering system An information filtering system is a system that removes redundant or unwanted information from an information stream using (semi)automated or computerized methods prior to presentation to a human user. Its main goal is the management of the inform ...
* Information explosion The information explosion is the rapid increase in the amount of published information or data and the effects of this abundance. As the amount of available data grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult, which can lead ...
References
Search engine software
Internet terminology
Recommender systems