The Data Science of Human Behavior
Burt Kaliski | Jun 15, 2012One of my favorite data scientists of the “next web” generation is Hilary Mason, chief scientist of Bitly.
Hilary was the presenter at the Verisign Labs Distinguished Speakers Series in late May, and brought a fascinating perspective on what Bitly is learning about human behavior through its URL shortening service. The company is asking questions like: What links are users shortening so they can share them with other users? And what shortened links are they clicking on? It turns out that there’s a difference: users tend to shorten more links that make them seem intelligent – such as world news – yet click on more links that arguably would make them seem less so – like celebrity gossip. The links that are shared and clicked on more are the lowest common denominator among the ones that were initially shortened.
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