The super computer knows all the seasonal trends
On Wednesday, IBM launched a new app for its Watson cognitive computer system that draws from its API of data scanned from social networks, blogs, forums, comments, ratings, and reviews to forecast the most popular products for this upcoming holiday season. Acting almost as a personal salesperson, Watson Trend can not only predict the most popular products, but can explain why a product is going to trend.

In referencing the Apple Watch, a product that received the highest Trend Score, 100 out of 100, Watson Trend explains that; “With the release of Watch OS 2.0, many issues that early adopters had were resolved. In general, people love the aesthetic appeal of the Apple Watch as well as app notifications, although some folks pine for a more classic round design. One of the most discussed detractors is battery life.”

What makes Watson Trend so innovative is its ability to parse together qualitative sentiments from an enormous amount of product reviews, comments, social media conversations, and mentions that it culls from the Internet and structures together in a digestible format. As a result, Watson can not only predict what products will be popular, but why those products will be popular. IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has called data the new “natural resource” as the world enters a new “Cognitive Era".

With so much unstructured data out there, cognitive technology such as Watson creates value by harnessing the insights and realizing the potential of such valuable information. The Watson platform has already opened up to a host of apps that utilizes its technology such as the North Face’s Fluid, the USAA’s military transition services, and the Mayo Clinic’s clinical trial research initiatives among others.

As the technology progresses, businesses are opened up to opportunities for strategic decision-making and information-driven change, freeing up many more resources to the creative execution aspects of their operations. In the time being, however, skip the shopping lines and holiday madness by checking out IBM Watson Trend’s very thought out gift guide.