I’ve often lamented that in while in offline retail environments, you can directly observe user behavior (through retail anthropology techniques a la Paco Underhill’s Envirosell), you couldn’t do the same thing in online stores.

I was then delighted to see Eyetracking technology evolve enough to be used for online retail. And now, the “circle is complete” as Path Intelligence Monitors Foot Traffic in Retail Stores By Pinging People’s Phones.

Creepy? Absolutely. Innovative and useful? No doubt.

While a single shopper’s specific path through a store may be information as trivial as “who is David Thiel’s favorite band” the aggregation of this information through an ambient method like Path Intelligence can lead to all sorts of data driven commerce strategies.   This automatic collection of ambient information (vs. the self-promotional blogging/tagging/posting requirements of Web 2.0) is my vote for Web 3.0.

Exciting stuff.

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