Personalization is a topic often discussed when it’s time to rebuild a website. What is it? What does it do? Should our website do it? How can we be like Amazon? That last one is a good one. I hear it frequently.

Historically, personalization has been divided into two categories: explicit and implicit. I say historically because this is shifting. I don’t know what to call the new category just yet, but more on that later. First, let me start by giving you a quick overview of personalization to date.

Explicit Personalization

Explicit personalization is a major building block of most websites today. Explicit personalization is the method of delivering content to users based on information they have provided to you. Authorization (member’s only content) is a prime example. The user has identified his/her self. Based on this identification, certain information will be delivered to this user. User preferences are also a form of explicit personalization. Users may determine they prefer news concerning specific subjects. Based on this, their experience is custom tailored to delivery only the appropriate information. This isn’t really pushing content to the user; it’s more of an automated pull. The user has predetermined what he/she will be seeing.

Implicit Personalization

Implicit personalization is the process of delivering content to users based on their behavior. No information has been explicitly provided from the user to you. As the user navigates through the website, his/her experience is being documented and observed. Content is then delivered based on predetermined rule sets. For example, a common rule set will deliver the content next in queue based on what other, similarly-behaving users have chosen (Amazon’s model – greatly simplified). This is a powerful technique for delivering content. Users are identifying themselves into audience segments simply by browsing the website. In doing so, they’ve empowered you to push information their way; information they are more likely to be interested in.

What’s Next?

That’s right. I said this is changing. To date, both explicit and implicit personalization have mostly been applied to content created by you, the website administrators. Enter Social Media, Blogs, Forums, Facebook, Twitter… User generated content. Can user-submitted content be personalized? Absolutely!

Who’s already doing it?

Gmail displaying personalized user generated content

Google has been doing exactly this with their Gmail application since it was released in beta on April 1st, 2004 (yeah, April Fool’s day). That section to the right of your email contains Sponsored Links (ads). The intriguing thing about these ads is they are sourced based on the content of your emails.

Here, Google is using your user generated content to determine what appeals to you at this particular moment in time. Based on that information, appropriate ads are pushed your way. Its ingenuity is impressive to say the least. Over the years, I’ve found these ads are becoming much more relevant to the conversations at hand.

What does this mean for you?

That’s the sixty four thousand dollar question, isn’t it? Many organizations are struggling with social media. How can it be incorporated into marketing strategies? Should we host social media tools on our website? What if someone says something contrary to our organization’s public policy? There are many questions that need answering – uniquely for each organization.

If social media is on your radar, keep personalization of it in mind. While not 100% implicit in nature as the users are providing you with information (keywords in their posts for example), it is a much more powerful tool than explicit. This new method of personalization is 100% impromptu from the user’s perspective. As the community thrives, and more content is generated by the users, the targeted content from your organization becomes more accurate and relevant.

My question to you

My question to you is what will you do? Knowing that social media can be personalized, does this make you more or less inclined to participate? Does it make you more or less inclined to provide a community environment? Does it simply raise more questions? What are your thoughts?