What is Intelligent Content?

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
~ Isaac Newton. 

Think about your favorite app or website. Does it use your location and maps to work? How about voice recognition and search? Does it deliver media? Is it free and rely on ads for revenue or did you purchase it? Chances are it is standing on the shoulders of one or more of the following technologies that power our daily tech lives:

• Search
• Mapping
• Ad Frameworks
• Payment Systems
• Devices
• Voice Recognition
• Image Recognition
• Voice, Text & Video Communication
• Linguistic Analysis
• Language Translation
• Content Delivery Networks
• Cloud Computing & Big Data

Tim O'Reilly was one of the first to recognize this in his advancement of the Internet Operating System--an interchangeable tech environment that works seamlessly together. Kind of like Plug 'n Play.  

So where does digital content fit into this picture? Well if it is intelligent, it will fit in perfectly as an integral, interconnected Giant Shoulder to stand on. And it will play a significant role in future technologies.

In some ways, Intelligent Content is the missing piece. Without it, apps cannot use geolocation to consistently suggest nearby restaurants, parks, reviews, video tours, advertisements and more when you're driving or walking.  Content consumers still need to "hunt and choose" their content even though we could suggest it based on their age, their gender, where they are, past purchases, personal preferences, their device and more. 

So even if all of the amazing technologies did their job, if content is not intelligent, we are missing the opportunity to be fully integrated. Manual, tedious processes related to content will continue to be the norm vs. intelligently leveraging the amazing infrastructure in place.

What does Intelligent Content Look Like?

Coined by Ann Rockley, she writes that “Intelligent content is content that’s structurally rich and semantically categorized and therefore automatically discoverable, reusable, reconfigurable, and adaptable.”

So, if content is made to be intelligent, it can be discovered, reused, reconfigured,  and adapted to the wondrous world of Giant Shoulder Technologies around it. In other words, it can Plug 'n Play nicely with others.

IT Companies Have Made Great Strides

As expected, the big tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Amazon have made great strides in making content more intelligent. You see in search results that it is increasingly organized the way people want it. Contact info, maps, segmentation by media type, and even a capsule that breaks down the basic organization of a site has become prevalent. Across applications, we see correlation of social identity data to the content we consume through suggested articles, products, ads and more.

IBM has recently released Watson, which is perhaps the future of how computers can make content intelligent. It focuses on cognitive computing, applying linguistics and the human experience to big data and content. Injecting human discernment along the content consumption pathway is what makes this approach unique. It has recently opened up its power to developers. So look out world!

Beyond the Machine, We will Need to Play a Role

We as content authors, developers and consumers will need to to play a role for content to increase its intelligence. Authors must be ever-active in creating, segmenting, tagging and correlating content for different audiences, purposes and digital scenarios--mobile, location, time, demographics, etc. Developers must look to modularize data and functionality from the system up. Building in consumer contribution to make content more intelligent and personalized is an important part of this. Yes, a lot more to think about before releasing a new application or piece of content. And, a lot more collaboration between content creators and IT folks. But the benefit will be exponential in effect.

To help this effort, Ann Rockley founded and has hosted the Intelligent Content Conference over the last five years. She joined forces with Joe Pulizzi's Content Marketing Institute recently to advance the conversation, implementation and awareness. If you want to learn about intelligent content or help lead the way, this is a great resource and community.

Perhaps Intelligent Content Optimization will Emerge

We've all heard of Search Engine Optimization. If you think about it, search engines have forced us in some way to create intelligent content. If we want a resource to make the Top 10 results, then it has to be formatted well enough, perform well and be relevant to the information world.

But this cannot be our only focus. We need to expand our optimization of content to plug into all of the Giant Technologies beyond search. Make it plug into geolocation mapping, be easily translated and linguistically analyzed, be associated with social identity data, etc. This will expand the way we create and have tremendous implications for next-generation Content Management Systems. Perhaps a new trend will emerge to replace just SEO--instead it might be ICO (Intelligent Content Optimization). 

Awareness is Key

If we can begin to see content as an integral piece of the technology puzzle, that in itself will be a breakthrough.  So, hopefully, this post and other efforts have begun to make you aware. Spread the news and start to make your content intelligent.