In this month of December, opening a story on Instagram is one more opportunity to find the best of a friend’s Spotify. And discover that this year you have heard especially sad songs or that you have risky musical tastes. Music, video games or even top of the words used in our messages, the annual retrospectives that the applications create are a gold mine of our data that, once shared, is made public.
• Music classification
Starting with the Spotify compilations, widely shared on social networks. The platform presents a personalized ranking of the user’s musical year: the most listened to music, the number of hours, the new groups discovered… And these very precise results do not come out of nowhere. The data collection is based on that used throughout the year for the proposal of personalized playlists.
To create these playlists, Spotify tracks the music listened to in real time, it knows how long it is listened to, if the user pauses or skips to another song. Spotify organizes all this information into certain categories and uses them to choose the music it offers. A Bank of England study found that Spotify data can predict users’ moods.
With a vertical, minimalist and colorful format, Spotify has designed the format of its retrospective so that it can be easily shared on social networks. A playful and fun format but that is just as ingenious for the user to advertise for free by publicly sharing their music, which is ultimately similar to a summary of personal data. It is true that music or podcasts are not a date of birth or a credit card code, but what we listen to says a lot about our lives and our habits.
The French platform Deezer also offers a retrospective of the year. And it turns out to be very accurate: top 5 most listened music, new discoveries, number of songs listened, number of minutes and hours listened or even the top 5 artists. At the end of the retrospective, Deezer encourages users to share the ranking on social networks thanks to some visuals that are also very “instagrammable”.
To recommend playlists, Deezer specifies the data it relies on: name, age, gender, user ID, device ID, approximate location, product interactions, photos, and history.
For the first time this year, Apple Music is also offering a replay to its subscribers.
• The best messages
More original but also more personal, Théo Delemazure goes further. This PhD student in mathematics has created a site that allows us to get the most out of our Messenger conversations. Their Chats Wrap site compiles our uploaded Facebook data to create charts. The user can thus have a retrospective of his messages. The site allows you to see the number of messages sent and received, the number of conversations, photos, the moment the user sends the most messages, a top of the most used words, favorite emojis or personality. . “The goal was to present fun graphics with fun data,” explains Théo Delemazure to Tech&Co.
Already in 2021, Theo had developed this site, mostly for his friends, and had even developed a quiz app on the same model. The creator of artificial intelligence “Is it from the left or from the right” has gained visibility for a few months on social networks, so he decided to share his site this year. For him it is “a way to recover his data.”
Building the site was not very complicated, it just used Javascript code. To see the best of Messenger, you need to download your data from Facebook before uploading it to the site. Which is not an easy task because it can take several hours. In ce qui concerne la sécurité des données, Théo assures that celles-ci are not pas stockées: “le site n’utilise pas de serveur, on peut l’utiliser sans connexion internet une fois que le site est ouvert”, explain-t -The.
• Retrospective video games
On the video game side, there are also a lot of retrospectives. From December 13 to January 13, Playstation offers the Wrap-Up to its users. By logging into their account, the player discovers the number of hours spent on their PS4 or PS5 console. The list is divided into four sections: comparisons with the previous year, number of days played, top 5 most played titles and trophies won.
Regarding the data, the player authorizes Sony to consult the data stored in the console to add them. The only restriction is that you must be over 18 years of age. On the login page, Sony specifies that “users who refused to submit their ‘full details’ through the system settings of their PlayStation 5 in 2022 will not be able to participate in highlights”, that is, the Resume.
Nintendo offers a similar service for Switch. By logging into their account, the player can view the number of games played, hours spent on each title, and gaming habits. All collected between January 1 and November 30. Nintendo states on its login page that “the data displayed on this page is based on your gaming activity, collected by Nintendo in accordance with the Nintendo Account Agreement and Nintendo Account Privacy Policy.” .
Last on the list, Replay 2022 from the Steam gaming platform. The retrospective is quite comprehensive, giving you access to the most played games, total playing time, number of achievements unlocked, and player profile (whether you like newer games or more classic games).
• Books and movies
Another more literary classification this time, but one that says a lot about our tastes and customs: book or film applications. The ClassBook app allows you to view statistics throughout the year. The number of books read, the number of pages and even the estimated value as well as a top 5 authors and genres. Like music retrospectives, the Goodreads app offers a summary at the end of the year: number of books and pages read.
The same on the cinema side, the TV Time app offers detailed statistics. Throughout the year, the user enters his statistics that give a fairly complete compilation: episodes watched, time spent watching series or movies, number of programs added or total episodes that remain to be watched.
Streaming platforms such as Netflix or Amazon Prime Video have not yet developed their annual retrospective. Something to give you some ideas.
Source: BFM TV
