“Big
data” is a technology catch-phrase which has recently become popular. It is
used to describe the explosive growth in the "data" gathered by the computer-based
systems including social networks, corporate systems and government computers.
As
it pertains to Social Networks/ Social Commerce, Big Data includes every photo
you ever uploaded to your Facebook account, every tweet you sent, every status
change you posted on LinkedIn, every video uploaded to YouTube, and/or every
call you made through Skype. In many cases, this information is further
enhanced by location -- where the user is using a location-enabled device, such
as a Smartphone with GPS. And that’s just for starters – this
information can then be combined with available location data, such as street addresses, phone books,
business listings, etc.
Think
of how much information you alone have uploaded; then multiply it by a hundred
million times to cover every person in the world.
As you might imagine,
contextualizing this information is an enormous challenge – fortunately, there
are many innovative tools and techniques which allow businesses and governments
to analyze and make sense of the big data and use it for their benefit.
The
ability to mine big data will be a boon to Social and Mobile Commerce. Armed
with so much data, companies will finally be able to serve advertisements and
offers which are precisely targeted to you based not only on your age, gender,
education, relationship status and where you live, but also your precise
physical location at that time, and what your friends just bought. They can
catch trends earlier and better serve their consumers’ wants and needs.
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