6 ways that IBM Watson is changing digital marketing

While IBM’s Watson supercomputing service is named after former IBM chairman and CEO Thomas Watson, the name also recalls another famous Watson.

“Mr. Watson, come here,” Alexander Graham Bell reportedly yelled into the mouthpiece of the first working telephone in 1876, summoning his assistant and marking the first call ever.

So, it’s completely appropriate that IBM’s Watson — representing the transmitted availability of supercomputing to anywhere on the planet — bears a name that has played a central role in the emergence of both computing and telecommunications.

But this is not an ordinary remote computing service. Instead, it’s what mobile retail platform NewStore CMO Phil Granof described to me as “genius-as-a-service.” Watson and similar services mean that the highest levels of computing intelligence are now available to any tool, anywhere.

This “changes almost everything,” analyst David Raab told me, adding that “algorithms are now a commodity.”

[Read the full article on MarTech Today.]

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.