Monday, August 01, 2011

Google has you covered with ‘Sparks’

Google+ has a functionality known as ‘Sparks’ -- a content recommendation engine that finds the most relevant and interesting articles and videos on almost any imaginable subject. The Spark for Android, for example, contains links and thumbnails from articles about recent Android news.

Google doesn’t publish how it determines which content is the most relevant, but most likely it uses signals from its search engine, Google News, Google+ and others to determine which content is the most relevant algorithmically.

Google provides a list of suggested topics, but you can type in almost any topic that suits your fancy. Some sparks have more content than others, though. You can also “pin” your favorite sparks to your left-hand navigation for easy access at any time. Sparks also lets you directly share the content you find with your circles.

This Google+ functionality can be used by users who would like to find out more about their favorite band or consumer product, and can influence the way marketers spread viral information that can be picked up by the Google+ sparks algorithm. It provides another avenue and platform upon which consumer products can gain exposure to their targeted market.

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