The Snowflake Effect#

(This is a "re-print" of a draft introduction to a longer publication I am preparing with my Good Friend Wayne Hodgins - see also my blog and Wayne's, where we frequently discuss this theme...)

The Snowflake Effect is a label we use for a widespread trend towards personalization, at a both deeper and wider level than ever before.

Deeper in this context means that personalization is no longer based on stereotypes that group us in clusters of people with the same taste, or learning style, or demographics: rather, technology now makes it possible to treat each of us as the unique individual that we are, with our personal characteristics, requirements, constraints and contexts.

Moreover, personalization now happens at a wider level than ever before, as it is possible to realize it in more contexts more often for a wider audience than ever before. Before, personalized production was reserved to the ‘haute couture’ for the happy few, while the rest of us had to settle for ‘pret-à-porter’ mass production.

The trend towards more extreme personalization is obvious in many web based tools. Typical examples include amazon, that presents itself as an individualized book store with personalized recommendations, web based radio stations like last.fm or pandora that take into account the personal preferences and interest of the listener, or social networking sites like Facebook or twitter that support the interactions between a user and his network of friends.

We observe the same trend also for more physical items like clothes, cars or travel. In fact, ever since the ‘You can choose any color as long as it is black’ days of Henry Ford, we’ve had at least some personalization in much of what we produce or consume: you can buy a pair of jeans in your size, in the color you want, with wide or small pipes, a loose or slim fit, etc. On the web, you can order a specific computer with the amount of RAM, the processor speed, the hard disk capacity, and, yes, even the color you want...

We believe that this trend is entering a new phase, as we continue to go further down the path of personalization, all the way to the individual level. Cars are made-to-order, based on the specific requirements of the individual buyer: indeed, there may be no other car in the world that is exactly the same as yours. Or news sites can now Snowflake your experience to the extent that nobody else gets the same selection of news, with the same lay-out as you do. Indeed, the main search engines now provide Snowflaked results that take into account your surfing and searching experiences to deliver more specific results to your query.

Of course, the Snowflake trend is facilitated by the relentless technological revolution that Moore’s law continues to drive forward. Snowflaking is now taking place at a much wider scale than ever before. Digital and physical objects are made-to-order. 3D printing makes it feasible to build customized parts or objects for a market of one. Beyond, professional practices are being Snowflaked, as we witness with the evolution to science2.0, library2.0, medicine2.0, etc. Experiences in the more private sphere are following the same trend, for instance through the exploding phenomenon of time shifting in television.

So why do we call this the Snowflake Effect? Well, in a snowstorm, all the snowflakes are unique. Indeed, according to wikipedia: “A snowflake consists of roughly 1018 water molecules, which are added to its core at different rates and in different patterns, depending on the changing temperature and humidity within the atmosphere that the snowflake falls through on its way to the ground. As a result, it is extremely difficult to encounter two identical snowflakes.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow) In a similar way, we as individuals are all unique. The Snowflake Effect is the result of this massive trend towards hyper-personalizing our products, practices and experiences.

We believe that the Snowflake Effect is fundamentally changing how we relate to the world around us: by treating us as the unique person we are, objects become more usable and useful, practices become more effective and efficient and experiences become more relevant and meaningful.