Key Takeaways from the OxyCon Global Web Scraping Conference
/EIN News/ — VILNIUS, Lithuania, September 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Hosted by the leading provider of public web data collection solutions Oxylabsthe eminent web scraping conference OxyCon global web scraping experts connected for a two-day online event. From practical advice for engineers to high-level panel discussions, speakers reviewed the most recent developments in the field.
The web scraping industry is maturing both technologically and commercially; however, proper regulation is still lacking. For this reason, major market players are launching an Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative (EWDCI) to share best practices and uphold common principles. These are some of the main takeaways from this year’s edition of the event.
Allen O’Neill, CEO and CTO of The DataWorks, argued that even though the web scraping industry has grown rapidly over the years, there is still a lot of potential for the future:
“The web scraping industry hasn’t even scratched the surface of its potential yet. There will be many new unicorns in the industry over the next 10 years – those who are able to harness the power of mining (not data mining, but information mining) and using it to get insights that have never been seen before,” Allen said.
The industry’s rapid growth was exemplified by scaling being OxyCon’s hottest topic. Karsten Madsen, CEO of SEO firm Morningscore, shared his team’s story of going from small data demands to competing with giants in the SEO industry. According to him, it’s not always about having the most data or the smartest data — it’s about having smarter algorithms to manage it.
Glen De Cauwsemaecker, Lead Crawler Engineer at OTA Insight, had another piece of advice for scaling data operations: “Be pragmatic and seek the cost-reward balance,” he recommended for fast-growing data businesses.
Along with the technical challenges of scaling, legal issues are also often at the top of the list of concerns. Participants in the “Lawyers Discuss Scraping” roundtable highlighted the ambiguity and many areas of unclearness that come with the lack of proper industry regulation. As a result, the industry itself must be proactive in protecting it from within and sharing best practices among themselves.
With this in mind, Christian Dawson, Executive Director of I2Coalition, announced a new web scraping industry initiative. I2Coalition, in collaboration with five public data aggregators – Oxylabs, Zyte, Smartproxy, Coresignal and Sprious – has launched an Ethical Web Data Collection Initiative (EWDCI). The aim of the group will be to promote industry best practices and advocate for beneficial technical standards.
OxyCon is an annual knowledge sharing opportunity for the global web scraping community. Sessions from this year’s edition can be viewed on demand here.
Media contact:
Vytautas Kirjazovas, Communications Manager
press@oxylabs.io
oxylabs.io
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Image 1: OxyCon was a two-day online conference
Photo credit: Oxylabs
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OxyCon was a two-day online conference
OxyCon was a two-day online conference
OxyCon was a two-day online conference
