Interconnected technologies regularly produce incredibly massive quantities of information. This year, we’re producing around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (that’s 2.5 x 1018) every day, according to IBM! All of this data combined is now commonly referred to as Big Data - a data set so large it’s increasingly difficult to analyze using the software and tools currently available. However, using smaller, more manageable, and more localized data sets, a growing number of organizations are able to not only manage this data, but also to accurately analyze this data in an effort to measure and even predict human behavior.
Here’s a (teeny tiny) snapshot of how this wealth of data can be used:
- Information snagged from Twitter used to accurately track the cholera outbreak in Haiti, using HealthMap
- WeFeelFine.org automatically tracks emotions by age, location, gender and more
- Want to know what areas tweet more about beer, as opposed to those who tweet more about church? (Probably not, but here you go.)
Social Media Mining
The content of many of these more manageable data sets often comes from geotagged social media data from sources using machine-readable data output formats. So when individuals all over the world post to Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other outlets, that data is out there, able and ready to be captured and analyzed by people and organizations all over the world.
Lately, we’ve been discussing the huge impact big data has and will have in our everyday lives and the growing interest in the field of data rights. So, how are organizations using this huge amount of social media data, and what does that mean?
This recent article in the Washington Post discusses exactly that. From Wall Street traders to politicians, there’s a huge interest in accurately determining and predicting human behavior based on particular events. So organizations are constantly working to analyze what terms are trending, what words are used most often, and what emotions may be attached to those words.
While frankly, it’s quite impressive we’re able to get a sense of how people are feeling or what events are directly affecting their lives - instantly - based on this social media information, again, we’re back to the topic of data rights. You might even say that the astounding volume of data available on the lives of private citizens is a little scary. However, as long as the conversations on open data and data rights continue, the future of data use looks positive. At minimum, just knowing that this data analysis is happening should alert individuals to the fact that they should be a little more aware and conscious about what they’re putting out on there on these social media sites. Devise your own set of personal privacy standards and stick to them. If you’re the leader of a business or other organization, be sure there are data policies in place that clearly define how your employees use these social media tools.
As you can see, big data is a huge topic of interest now and into the future. Keep on top of new data developments here at the SmartWave blog.