Me&my GROCER - Industry Trend or Event

Industry Standard, The, Nov 6, 2000 by Alexei Obeskovic

Personalization technology is at the heart of many of today's most popular online destinations. It's what makes it possible for Amazon.com to spit out book recommendations and the Lands' End Web site to suggest the right swimsuit size, for example.

"Firefly was very influential in getting people to expect personalized experiences on the Web," says Steve Larsen, senior VP of marketing at Minneapolis-based Net Perceptions, a collaborative-filtering software vendor that launched shortly after Firefly. Larsen estimates that more than half of today's leading e-commerce sites use some form of personalization technology; his firm has more than 200 customers.

The technology has come a long way since 1997. Advances in analytics and collaborative filtering, along with decreasing storage prices, have converged to make today's personalized sites more powerful and more accurate. But Firefly's initial goal still stands. "There are people out there, not just browsers," says Metrall. "Turn on the lights."