Personal shopper app suggests gifts based on trends

IBM's Watson Trend app analyzes conversations on social media and review sites to forecast trends and help users chose gifts.

We previously wrote about tools that let businesses connect with their customers across social media platforms. Drawing data from similar content, IBM’s Watson Trend studies trending products with the aim of helping shoppers pick the right gifts.

The app uses natural language processing to analyze the tone, context, and meaning of conversations about products across social media and review sites. It then provides a numbers-driven report of ones that are trending at that time — users can browse overall top trends, or see ones within specific categories — and rates products with a score of 0-100. The trend strengths are tested to predict how long a particular product will remain hot for. Users can search for niche interests of gadget heads or superhero-obsessed preteens, and the app will be able to recognize the demographic and geographic contexts of the conversations surrounding the targeted products.