North Star
Since 1950, technology's collective ambition has been to pass the Turing Test - to interact with computers in the most natural way.
As consumer software became widely adopted in the '90s, it became apparent that intelligence alone would not be enough to make machines maximally useful, so a new north star emerged:
True Personalization.
Software specifically tailored and designed for each individual has been the inevitable destination.
And with AI assistants, this goal is finally within reach. But it's contingent on how deeply they understand each of us.
History of Personalization
Friend Graph
Interest Graph
Identity Graph
The Friend Graph
The first major framework for personalization was the Friend Graph.
Early feeds relied on manually added friends to make platforms feel more personal. This became the default for years because it was effective and simple to build.
The Interest Graph
As machine learning improved, software began predicting our implicit interests through our behavior: what we watch, how long we watch it, number of times we replay it, and more.
We were able to input vast amounts of behavioral data into algorithms which resulted in far more personalized feeds. This became known as the Interest Graph.
The Identity Graph
Friends and Interests are only subsets of our identity.
To reach the final form of personalization, AI assistants must know all aspects of who we are:
hobbies, occupation, religion, political views, education history, family, and more.
This is why Orbit is building the Identity Graph.
True Personalization
Each era of personalization has been defined by the data layer beneath it.
Just as the Friend Graph powered the first generation of social feeds, and the Interest Graph powered the algorithm era...
The Orbit Identity Graph will power the final generation of personalized software.
