Stats don’t lie: “Related Content”
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007Intro:
- We’re big fans of Amazon.com.
- Currently, Nate’s reading Everything is Miscellaneous
- VentBox only did one thing “smartly”
Introducing, the “Related Content” Block
Yesterday we issued a new Block to publishers, which can exist in the small column of content pages, called the “Related Content” Block.
What this block does is very similar to an Amazon.com feature you may be aware of and which is talked about at length in David Weinberger’s book. Also, it’s the one feature VentBox had:
Basically, it analyzes user engagement history and displays related content based on those user engagement metrics. In layman’s terms, it’s “People who *engagement termed* this also *engagement termed* this.”
As seen the case below, stats don’t lie. We implemented this block on the Silicon Alley 100 BricaBox; and, when you compare Charles Forman’s nomination against mine, you see that “People who nominated Charles Forman also nominated…” folks like Nick Denton and Henry Blodget, while “People who nominated Nate Westheimer also nominated…” Charlie O’Donnell and Caroline McCarthy.
Makes sense.
The usefulness of this feature is evident and the benefits are spread evenly among publishers and users. This puts interesting and relevant content one click away from site visitors, and increases page views for publishers. It’s a win / win. Anyway, we’ll tweak this feature going forward, but for now, please enjoy.
