Data is the next “Intel Inside”

In this week, we have concentrated on anther pattern of web 2.0 applications which is “Data is the next Intel Inside”. It states that data plays the most important role for the websites. Some of web 2.0 applications, such as eBay, Amazon and Google, gain lots of competitive advantages from their data strategy. In order to discuss the web 2.0 applications pattern of Data is the next “Intel Inside”, “Shopnics.com” (www.shopnics.com) will be introduced in the following paragraphs.

In our lives, sometimes people are not able to make a decision to buy something such as a camera. Although people can search some information of products from popular websites, however it is still hard to choose. Because that there are plenty of options.

Shopnics.com is a product comparison shopping engine aiming to help users easily and quickly find products based on their needs. Shopnics.com not only has a great deal of data about some kinds of electronics products on its website, but also represents data in a smart way by using graph which is named “Shopnics Decision Graph”. The data on Shopnics.com website are collected by two ways. One is from developers of Shopnics.com website. And another way of collecting products data or information is from users’ contribution.

On one hand, Shopnics.com mainly focuses on electronics products. And developers collected detailed data and information for all production on the website. Furthermore, they managed all the data and applied the knowledge in the field of Artificial Intelligence to come up with the algorithm to find the best decision. A Shopnics Decision Graph is shown below for search of laptop.

Once, click on the bubble to see details and on “More Info” link to check prices from different vendor and other open data about the product. On the “Refine” tag, it is smart to filter users’ choices by specifying different sources.

On the other hand, users can leave a comment about specific product in order to provide some information or suggestion for other buyers or users. And users can flexibly change product rankings base on data or features to them.

In brief, Shopnics.com shows the ability of collecting data and controlling data. “Shopnics Decision Graph” is a brilliant and unique design that focuses on classifying data and providing wide ranges of website services. Developers of Shopnics.com try their best to maximum open data as strategic assets, because they realize that data is the most significant element for contributing a web 2.0 application. Finally, by using the example of Shopnics.com, it is apparent that data has already become the core component of web 2.0 application.

References:

<1>  Shopnics introduction  http://www.crunchbase.com/company/shopnics

<2> Sir Tim Talks Up Linked Open Data Movement  http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3753646

<3>Open Data: Small Pieces Loosely Joined by O’Reilly, Tim http://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_61779_1%26url%3D