AI recruitment, Instant Experiences and Google+

This week in 60 seconds…

  • Amazon has found that AI is not without its flaws, as the e-commerce giant scrapped its AI recruiting tool which showed bias against woman… because it was programmed entirely by men
  • Google found itself in a similar boat with the prospect of shutting Google+ down after a data-exposing bug was covered up. Not that anyone uses Google+ anyway…
  • You may be keen to start doing some scrapping of your own, replacing the usual still images with the brand new 3D version on Facebook
  • Meanwhile, their sister company Instagram has followed suit with a new feature on Stories that allows you split longer videos into segments
  • With all the action this week focussed around social and digital, it can sometimes be easy to forget the role that TV still plays in the industry. Can big data bring it back to the forefront of our minds?

A final thought…

At the risk of recycling old sentiments, it’s worth revisiting the idea of making meaningful content that stands out on new features and platforms. For example, with the new Stories feature, most companies will see this as an opportunity to post one long, linear video to the platform. But how can you create something, using this new mechanism, that breaks the mould and really stands out to your audience?

Data Byte

It may seem a bit extreme to get rid of Google+ but it’s more of a mercy killing than anything else. In 2014, at its peak, Plus had 540 million monthly active users but over 50% didn’t even visit the site. If that wasn’t enough, Google’s Vice President of Engineering, Ben Smith, recently revealed that, “90% of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.” So, if you’re an avid ‘Pluser’ and you’ve been feeling a little lonely these past few years it’s probably because you’re the only person on there.