Earlier this week, Josh Stern at DigiDay posted an interview with Sachin Kamdar, the CEO ofParse.ly. Kamdar answered a range of questions tied to “Publishing in the Big Data Era“. Along the way Kamdar recommended that publishers:
- Integrate social with other metrics (like sales data)
- Avoid treating social as a silo
- Use technology to help drive analysis
- Proactively use social platforms to extend brand
Understandably, Kamdar wants publishers to consider his company’s analytic platform, Dash. While I don’t have a point of view on Dash, there are home-grown analytics packages already on the market (Book Seer and Bookigee, author-facing in its current incarnation, come to mind).
Publishers have yet to beat a path to their doors. In 2010 some of the larger concerns rushed to gain control over pricing, but publishers as a whole have been slow to implement technologies that would let them understand the broader implications of changes in price.
Ultimately, making changes without collecting data is the publishing equivalent of using sonar without listening for the response. If we want to take pricing seriously, we should acquire the tools and skill sets required to make analysis practical and informative.
