Target Point

eHarmony is MicroTargeting for your Lovelife

Millions of people use internet dating sites in hopes of finding that special someone, yet the actual inner workings of these sites remain somewhat mysterious. How can a mindless computer predict something as complex and personal as partner compatibility? Surely, the essence of love can never be expressed in binary.

However, innovative sites like eHarmony are getting close. Unlike some online dating tools, eHarmony doesn’t simply collect your hobbies and interests and match you with someone who input similar answers. Unfortunately, a shared appreciation for the Beatles and a golf interest does not necessitate a happy couple. 

How does eHarmony do this and what does it have to do with MicroTargeting?

Pandora is MicroTargeting For Your Music

Pandora is one of the most popular and innovative music sites out there. By simply typing in the name of a song or artist you like, Pandora will instantly play back a song with corresponding musical traits. Basically, it takes a song you already like, and spits back another song it thinks you would like. 

How does Pandora do this, and what does it have to do with MicroTargeting...

White House Salaries

The White House, as required by federal law, has released their annual report to Congress on the salaries of White House staffers.  For the second time, this data has been released as a downloadable, machine readable CSV file.  Because of this I was able to link it back to the previous year’s data.  This means we can see who got raises and promotions.  Here’s a very quick data dump of what I found:

MicroTargeting for Political Campaigns

MicroTargeting is a tool for candidates,and campaigns that helps to answer their most fundamental questions: Who supports my candidate? Where do I find them? How do I persuade others to support my candidate? When should I talk to them? Who should my messenger be? When done right, MicroTargeting answers each of these questions and does it in ways traditional targeting cannot. 

The process works at the crossroads of three related disciplines...

Personal Democracy Forum - Chart Wars

Watch TargetPoint VP give an updated version of his Chart Wars presentation to the crowd at 2010's Personal Democracy Forum, where he does a quick walk through of what he considers to be some of the best political visualizations of the last year...