I’ve always admired from the get-go Google’s ability to change the paradigm, grow the paradigm, of “search” – seeking, finding, creating, contributing “content”, social and actual.
Google Flu Trends, an initiative of Google.org, has carried out research taking search terms commonly used to search for “something” about influenza and then mapped the frequency of these terms to the actual epidemiological data collected by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The match is uncannily good.
Well … that’s cool … maybe not so surprising ... but … so what? Latency, that’s what. Quickness, swiftness, speed. It turns out that … and I can’t say this any better than The Official Google Blog itself can for themselves … “It turns out that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly. By making our flu estimates available each day, Google Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza.”
Being ahead of the curve … now that IS cool. Useful. Actionable.
We are what we search for. It doesn’t take much energized insight to stretch our own creative business minds to apply this model to appropriate business issues.
Thank you, Google, for making our One World a better place … acknowledging that this is only the beginning. And if you want to sing along to something One World-ish while you muse on what Google.org have done, and what might become … “Let’s get together and feel all right” … then I can’t suggest anything better than Bob Marley, singing One Love.
