Cluster Flock

We are all individuals, but wouldn't it be funny if someone could predict what you are going to do tonight - what you are going to eat, read, watch - and know what you value most in life?

e.g.:
Andy pulls into his row house in his Honda Civic. His wife he helps his wife prepare dinner and take care of their 4-year-old while listening to a classical music radio station. She goes to the gym while Andy puts their daughter to bed and reads a developmental economics book, "The Bottom Billion". Tomorrow will be his turn to go to the gym.

I've been thinking about consumer profiling (clustering) with the ever increasing availability of consumer data... specifically, the "analysis of consumer lifestyles to create a detailed customer profile... [these results] are combined with geographic (place of work or residence) and demographic (age, education, occupation, etc.) characteristics to develop a more 'lifelike' portrait of the targeted consumer segment."

You can (if you fall in to one of the top groups) check out your own profile by (US) zip code at http://www.claritas.com/MyBestSegments/Default.jsp?ID=0&SubID=&pageName=Home

A great many products are moving towards this predictive profiling: Google (Sponsored Links), iTunes' Genius, Amazon, other online booksellers, and TiVo Suggestions ("Users can rate programs from three "thumbs up" to three "thumbs down." TiVo user ratings are combined to create a recommendation, based on what TiVo users with similar viewing habits watch.")

I believe we will soon be seeing much more sophisticated "suggestions" software that pulls from larger data sources and has an almost "Ah, ha!" marketing appeal. A new era of direct marketing is on its way that will have us pegged so accurately that we will be uncertain of our own opinions ("Is the calculator wrong? Maybe Excel didn't add up those numbers right...").

Politics are very closely linked with marketing. While micro-attention to the polls has been around for several election cycles, I believe a much more detailed voter profile is coalesing which will allow for much more effective hooks. Modern and future election campaigns know what people care about, what media they use, and what they had for breakfast...