Alan Tebuev's Profile

Hey Stephen, great post!

I wonder how well would they say their hiring algorithm works.

Do they think this algorithm actually identifies their best candidate? Or does it just streamline the process for them?

I imagine, like most companies, they can just afford to adopt such filtering software because they get so many applications they are bound to find some people who’d be a good fit.

I like that they actually provide some sort of feedback though!

Hey Maxwell, thanks so much for your great post. As I was reading it, I couldn’t help but notice how many new AI features YouTube have added that have created so much value.

I have noticed that through the years I have relied more on watching recommended videos rather than searching for videos to watch.

I also had no idea that the chapter feature is sometimes auto-generated! Whenever I’m watching a Youtube video without chapters included, I am always very frustrated and I tend to blame the creator for not taking care in including such a useful features. What a great idea it is from YouTube to use AI to auto-generate video chapters.

Hey Chris, I really enjoyed reading your blogpost.

It would be interesting to see if Spotify can somehow recycle their plagiarism detection algorithm and use it in music creation software to suggest to artists which chord progressions are less used, which ones are more popular etc….

Great post, Snigdha!

This is actually just the company that I was looking for. I have to go through a lot of trial and error to get certain fashion accessories right.

Interestingly, in the value creation part, yesglasses are clearly a very customer centric company, and yet it sounds like they do not allow returns. I wonder where do they draw the line on being customer centric? I always notice this with a lot of companies, and I would love to be a fly on the wall when contradictory tradeoffs are made for customer centric decisions.

Hey Maxwell!

Thanks for your comment. When I was writing about the limitations of big data with podcasts I definitely made a few assumptions that are up to debate. My first one was that because podcasts are longer than individual songs, people won’t be listening to as many podcasts as songs, thus prediction would be made more difficult. Secondly, I assume that listeners are not as obsessed about constantly discovering new podcasts like they are with new songs since podcasts are a bigger commitment. I think that makes sense? I’m not so sure so I guess we’ll discuss in class tomorrow.

You make a great point about big data allowing Spotify to place more personalized ads, that is a huge driver of revenue for them.

Maxwell!

Indeed, great minds do think alike!

This is a great write up, I think I managed to miss the use of NLP to scan social forums when I was performing my own research.

I’d love to hear your opinion on the limitations and challenges that Spotify faces? Are there any from a data perspective? Or are they mostly from a business strategy perspective?

Great post, Chris! It’s a fascinating point about how much cash Starbucks holds.

I wonder how they take advantage of this liquidity and if it alters their overall strategy?

I also heard years back that Starbucks try to encourage customers to buy more of their food products, I wonder how the rewards scheme is used to push this?

Thanks so much for this wonderful read, Julia!

You make a fantastic point about how an app with seemingly just one function can compete with some of the music giants.

I do wonder to what extent the usage of Shazam translates to fans actually attending a music concert? Is there a certain percentage of users Shazaming(?) that end up actually going to the concerts? How do they calculate that?

This was a very great choice of company to write about, Alex! I wonder if Caesars Entertainment every discussed about future limitations of the data from their rewards program, if there are any? And I wonder how their data collection fits into their wider business strategy, I imagine the insight that they get can lead them to introducing new quality services.

Loved the title of the blog too!

Hey Chris, I absolutely love TooGoodToGo.

I feel like they would have a really challenging time to try to expand towards eliminating food waste within restaurants and supermarkets because going to a cafe is oftentimes quite a different use case compared to going to a restaurant and a supermarket.

Very cool read, Sebastiano!

I always wonder to what extent to companies perform psychological studies and studies to predict how humans would interact, so it’s great that you wrote about Blablacar’s studies.

I wonder how their results varied across different countries.

What are your thoughts about Blablacar’s future considering that the general expectation is that the most advanced nations will have self-driving EVs at pedestrians’ disposal. How do you think this affects Blablacar’s future?

Really great read, Daniel!

It’s so clear that you know a lot in this domain. I feel like substack’s model works so well to nurture quality blog writing, and I agree that they don’t do a particularly good job of helping their readers discover different authors.

However, this seems like a problem that can be solved with good design, so I think they have what it takes to transform and continue to be successful.

It’s amazing how Discord’s audience has grown to so many areas outside of gaming, and it seems as though this growth was unplanned by the Discord team and it happened almost entirely organically.

Very interesting, I had no idea about the cross-posting with Instagram. It would be interesting to explore how TikTok’s experience of the pandemic compared to other social media such as Instagram. And what did the pandemic stimulate TikTok to do that they wouldn’t have been working on otherwise? Perhaps, TikTok would have used the increased traffic from its users’ during the pandemic to further train their already impressive algorithm?

Great write up, Daniel! The pandemic really gave them a unique opportunity to expand their product line, especially considering that university admissions tests are so digitally unfriendly. I believe that they have huge plans for education in general, not just languages, so it will be interesting to keep an eye on them in the coming years.