I will seriously reconsider what pictures I post, this is why: Every day, users post about 130 million photos on Tumblr. Starting this week, the Yahoo-owned media brand will start to parse all those images for clues to users brand affiliations. Tumblr is inking a deal this week with Ditto Labs, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm that has analyzed photos posted on social media for brand-related data. That doesnt mean that if you post a selfie with a Coke bottle in the background that youll start seeing ads for Coke. Right now, were not planning to do anything ad-related, says T.R. Newcomb, head of business development at Tumblr. Instead, Dittos data will be available to advertisers who want to grok how they are perceived on the platform. If Coke wants to understand the nature of the conversation [about them on Tumblr] Ditto can sift through and deliver it to Coke, Newcomb says. SEE ALSO: Why Advertisers Cant Wait to Get Their Hands on Your Selfies Tumblr, which Yahoo bought last year for $1.1 billion, appears to be the first major online entity to attempt to analyze visual content for data. Pinterest in January bought a two-person firm called VisualGraph that appeared to have a similar mission. A Pinterest rep declined to give further details except to say that the two VG cofounders — Kevin Jing and his partner David Liu — were behind the July introduction of interest-based follow suggestions on Pinterest. Mark Zuckerberg, acting independent of Facebook, also invested in Vicarious, an artificial intelligence firm that dabbles in image-recognition. Google also spent $500 million for DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company back in January. Re/code reported DeepMind has been developing a variety of approaches to AI, and applying them to various potential products including a recommendation system for e-commerce.
Posted on: Mon, 18 Aug 2014 20:01:00 +0000
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