Paul Gillin
Latest from Paul Gillin
Opinion: When not to use Big Data
The news that Facebook tried to manipulate users’ emotions by fiddling with the content of their news feeds and that dating website OKCupid intentionally matched incompatible people to see how they would interact with each other is unsettling, but at least no lives were affected. What really gives me the creeps is the growing likelihood ...
Our top 10 stories of the first six months of 2014
It isn’t until you sift through hundreds of stories published over a six-month period that you realize how much happens in this industry. We asked our reporters to nominate their own best work of the first half of 2014 and paired that up with the news that leapt out at us. Below are the results: ...
Opinion: Why CIOs should cheer Google’s latest open source move
In 1943, legendary IBM Chairman Thomas Watson Sr. (that’s the dour fellow shown here) is reported to have said “There is a world market for maybe five computers.” Whether Watson actually uttered those words is debated, but the quote was long a lightning rod for ridicule when PCs were spreading like kudzu. Today, though, the ...
Americans don’t trust marketers to guard their private data
Amid all the excitement about the revolutionary potential of Big Data, it’s worth remembering that not everyone agrees that micro segmentation and one-to-one marketing are such great things. A pair of new research studies should serve as a warning. A survey of 1,000 U.S. citizens by the German research firm GFK found that nearly two-thirds ...