In a recent article for CNET News, Stephanie Olsen explained that investment in web technology initially dealt with commercializing the Web, helping companies like Amazon.com and eBay get on their way. The second wave of investment has been about helping people socialize and connect through sites like Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook. The third, she writes “will be about making sense of all the data people create around the Web, and then searching for patterns in the data to improve the delivery of personalized content, search results, or advertising.”

To make sense of the data, Olsen proposes, will require “building an intelligent system that understands the relationships between Web sites and how people use them–with the use of algorithms that understand keywords, context, and natural language on a massive scale. VCs (Venture Capitalists), for example, are looking to so-called semantic technology to significantly boost the amount of searches that result in an advertising “click.” Right now, an estimated 30 percent to 40 percent of Web searches do not return advertising revenue. But if a search engine understood the context of a person’s Web search more often, those numbers would improve, they say.”

“Simply put, the problem is information overload – there is so much good information that you have to look really hard to find the great information that you care about most”, said Tim Estes, CEO of Digital Reasoning Systems.

The typical approach to understanding unstructured data involves having to either read the data manually or use a keyword search tool. Both methods present challenges to accuracy and efficiency. Manual reading, while reliable, can take an inordinate amount of time. A keyword search, while fast, returns only limited results.

At Digital Reasoning, we apply advanced algorithms to solve both problems without sacrificing quality. In fact, because the software builds its models of meaning from the data and understands concepts – the end product is better information.

Since 2002, Digital Reasoning has worked with a variety of organizations and agencies both large and small to help them make sense of what is in their data. We are proud of the patented technology we’ve developed and our clients’ successes in the federal and intelligence market. Now we are making that same technology available to commercial clients.

About Digital Reasoning Systems, Inc.

Digital Reasoning develops technologies that solve the problem of information overload by providing the tools people need to read, understand and make use of vast amounts of unstructured data. Founded in 2000, Digital Reasoning is a privately held company based in Brentwood, Tenn. The company has conducted extensive research into machine learning systems. Out of this research the concepts behind the company’s patented breakthrough in machine learning and natural language processing were born.

Digital Reasoning provides Unstructured Data Analytics (UDA) solutions that enable organizations to discover critical, unknown liabilities opportunities by mining and analyzing the more than 80% of data that is unstructured and currently untapped.