This former Googler wants to help you tweet better
With Post Intelligence, the woman who helped build Google+ thinks AI can get you more "likes."
A Google veteran has built a social media assistant.
Artificial intelligence can help us do a whole lot of things: figure out what to binge-watch next, decide when to heat our homes, or even, eventually, drive us home.
One former Googler wants to add another thing to the list: make you a better tweeter or Facebooker.
On Thursday, Bindu Reddy, who used to be the head of product for Google social apps, launched a new service called Post Intelligence, which uses AI to try to get you more engagement and likes on your social media posts. It can help with Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
Here's how it works: If you connect the software to your Twitter account, when you login, you'll see a feed of articles and other content recommended for you to tweet about, based on your interests and what you've already tweeted in the past. If you write out a tweet, the software will rate it on a score of one to 10 to predict how engaging it will be. The software also suggests the best time to post.
The software predicts how well a tweet will do.
"Humans find it very difficult to be good at social media," said Reddy. "We aren't smart enough to post smart tweets and get engagement all the time. A lot of people just give up."
For some people, the idea of giving up on social media might be a good thing. After all, it has recently been accused of being a haven for cyberbullying, a vehicle for fake news, and a set of blinders that warps our world view and shuts out other viewpoints. But Reddy, who helped build Google+, is optimistic about the benefits of social media -- especially the kind that's mostly text-based, like Facebook and Twitter, which she thinks encourage smart observations and the spread of ideas.
And whether we like it or not, social media is likely here to stay. Facebook has almost two billion users and a market cap of more than $400 billion. Snap, which owns Snapchat and went public earlier this month, is the current obsession for teens and young adults.
Post Intelligence, for now, is available on desktop computers and Android phones, though Reddy expects an iPhone app to launch next month. More interesting, though, is where Reddy thinks the software can go.
She thinks the software can get to know your voice and quirks so well, that it could automatically write tweets for you. "What if you could say, 'I'm going on vacation. Tweet for me for the next three days,'" she said.
The service is a relaunching of Reddy's old company, MyLikes, a social media advertising platform. But she thought the AI behind that product could be helpful to normal consumers. But there's also a version of the product for brands and social media "influencers," which helps make sponsored content more engaging.
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