The IBM Watson Trend App Predicts the Future

Well, not really the future, but it forecasts trends and what products might sell out this X-Mas. The IBM Watson Trend app has officially launched today, and it’s the best way for consumers to understand the reasoning of trends and what popular products might sell out.

The IBM Watson Trend app can be downloaded for free from the iOS app store.

IBM’s new app basically searches millions and millions of conversations online. It does so by ransacking about 10.000 sources from social media platforms, forums, blogs, comments sections, reviews and ratings. It’s quite unique because, unlike any other app that just provides ratings for trendy merchandise, the Watson displays what consumers think about said product before and after purchasing.

Using its immense capability of understanding how language works, and Watson’s other learning abilities, the Trend app can easily surface why consumers choose a certain product or brand. It also uncovers the pattern that consumers tend to abide to.

More interesting, the app predicts the future with the help of analytics and it can pin-point when a trend is on a downwards spiral into obscurity or it’s going to skyrocket to the top.

Using natural language engine aggregates, it can provide insights on particular trend groups:

Sentiment,
Context and
Content.

By giving it a daily Trend Score, the Trend app displays the impact and the momentum of the trend by giving a group a number between 0 and 100. Display showcases how big the conversation is, and Momentum is the rate of growth of a particular conversation.

There are three categories at the moment – health and fitness, toys and consumers electronics. Users can view the top 100 products that are trending with the stories accompanying them. At the moment of writing this, November the 18th 2015, some of the top trends are:

Smartphone Photogs Drive Demand for Professional-Grade Cameras

Whether it’s Star Wars or Lego City, Buy Now Before It’s Too Late

Traditional Toys Go Back-to-School

Considering that Thanksgiving and Black Friday are knocking on our door, the IBM Watson Trend app predicts that, for the first time in existence, there will be more users using their mobile devices to seek deals than users turning to their desktops.

Mobile traffic is expected to rise by about 57%, during the five-day holiday. This is a 17% increase when compared to last year’s holiday. Also, it’s predicted that smartphone and tablet sales will increase by 36%, up from 34%.

The IBM Watson Trend app is available solely for iOS, Android users are out of luck. There’s no plan on bringing it to Google’s OS any time soon.

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Roxanne Briean

I am a geek, a gamer and a writer. I have always been fascinated with the online community. At the moment I work as a full-time writer and study interior design. When I'm not scouring the net in search of interesting new gadgets and software I spend my time in MOBAs or drawing.