Case Study: Power Poetry achieves 79% more poems posted and boosts teen literacy with Google Cloud Platform

Power Poetry Using poetry — and machine learning — to increase teen literacy

Power Poetry, the world’s first and largest mobile poetry community for youth, helps underserved teens find their voice and improve literacy but operates with a small staff and tight budget. Its challenge was to make poetry relevant and exciting to disadvantaged youth and increase engagement and classroom use.

Partnering with Whole Whale and using Google Cloud, Power Poetry built a machine‑learning “Poetry Genome” that analyzes submitted poems and matches them to rap lyrics and published poetry (using Cloud AutoML, ML Engine, Dataprep, Cloud Storage and Datastore) to surface relatable artist comparisons and recommendations. The campaign drove a 79% rise in poems posted, a 60% increase in teachers using the site, a 15% decrease in bounce rate and a 6% reduction in exit rate, boosting engagement and literacy.

Power Poetry

George Weiner

Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer