Posts tagged ‘Facebook’
Big Data Tools Need to Get Out of the Stone Age: Business Users and Data Scientists Need Applications, Not Technology Stacks
Things have been crazy at PatternBuilders recently. The excitement and positive reactions to FinancePBI, our Financial Services big data analytics solution, from media, analysts, venture folks, cloud infrastructure partners, and users has been amazing. Our new cross industry graphical big data correlation mashups are generating a lot of excitement as well—we like to call this feature Google Correlate on steroids. Check out how our newest partner analytics consultancy, InsightVoices, has used it to find relationships between stock prices and traffic sensor data.
Mary’s recent post on Strata West 2012 provides a great overview of how hot the hype cycle around big data has become (while managing to work in a plug for her favorite gory TV series as well). In case you’re still not convinced, here are some additional nuggets:
- The market for big data technology worldwide is expected to grow from $3.2 billion in 2010 to $16.9 billion in 2015, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 40% (hat tip to IDC).
- The amount of big data being generated continues to grow exponentially, now being expected to double in two years. This is largely driven by social networks, smartphones, and really cool IP-enabled devices like the Fitbit and this IPhone-based brain scanning device by our new Strata buddy Tan Le at Emotiv Lifesciences. Yes, she is much smarter than us but we like her anyway!
- The White House is even doing its share, investing $200 million a year in access and funding to help propel big data sets, techniques, and technologies while giving a shout out to our friends at Data Without Borders.
Roundup: About 4 Tech Giants, All Things Private, Social Media Stats, Maps, and Big Data!
Greetings one and all! It’s been a while since I posted about the more interesting articles, blogs, videos, etc., that I have come across and I thought that now is as good a time as ever to cover some interesting items you may have missed in the past few weeks. The topics are far ranging, thoughtful, illuminating, and at times, contentious, but that’s why they are interesting. So without further ado, let’s get to it!
Four Tech Giants Battle It Out
If you haven’t already, set aside some time to read Fast Company’s take on the (coming soon) great tech war of 2012. The combatants? Apple, Facebook, Google and, Amazon. The prize? Us—I think! This thoughtful piece by Farhad Manjoo looks at how these four goliaths will battle it out on the technology innovation field to, essentially, win the hearts, minds, and wallets of all of us:
“Think of this: You have a family desktop computer, but you probably don’t have a family Kindle. E-books are tied to a single Amazon account and can be read by one person at a time. The same for phones and apps. For the Fab Four, this is a beautiful thing because it means that everything done on your phone, tablet, or e-reader can be associated with you. Your likes, dislikes, and preferences feed new products and creative ways to market them to you. Collectively, the Fab Four have all registered credit-card info on a vast cross-section of Americans. They collect payments (Apple through iTunes, Google with Checkout, Amazon with Amazon Payments, Facebook with in-house credits). Both Google and Amazon recently launched Groupon-like daily-deals services, and Facebook is pursuing deals through its check-in service (after publicly retreating from its own offers product).”
Privacy and Big Data: Post-Book Thoughts, Mary’s POV
Well, our book is almost done—it’s now in production phase and Terence and I are finished with most of the heavy writing (unless our editor has some additional thoughts!). In terms of time, it really has not been that long since we signed on to do it—less than six months from initial concept to publication date. In terms of thought and brain-power, well now, that’s a very different story!
It has been a long, arduous, sometimes acrimonious (in the nicest possible way, of course) journey. You know, working for a small, privately held company means that even in the best of times, you already have multiple jobs so when you add writing a book on top of those, you tend to get a little fractured. This means that your family and friends may get a wee bit irritated with you because you simply do not have time and even when you do, you are usually talking about some aspect of privacy. So, to all my friends and family (Terence can mea culpa in his own post) thank you for being so understanding and for reading and reviewing our chapters! (more…)
Thoughts on Identity Theft, Government IT, Facebook and Google Plus
Before I begin, I must admit to being in a very grumpy mood which may (ever so slightly) color the topics in the post title. As you know, Terence and I are not only “work-working” but in our copious amounts of spare time, working on our book (plug fully, absolutely intended). While the book is going well, I must say that it has affected my Zen-like ability to remain calm (I can hear Terence chortling) when others may “lose it.” This leads me (you’ll understand in a minute) to the issue of identity theft. (more…)
Weekly Roundup: Privacy, Security, Amazon Reviews, Infographic Resumes, and the Comma!
Folks, I am neck deep in writing “stuff” this week (from my final McKinsey health care post to working with Terence on another chapter for our upcoming Ebook—yep, shameless plugs strike again!) but so many great posts and articles came through my “inbox” this week that I just have to “talk” about them. If you have some time over this long weekend, every single one of these items is worth a thorough read.
Privacy is Every Where and No Where
One of the most thoughtful posts on privacy in the digital world, courtesy of John Jordan, came out today. John’s use of real world examples to illustrate his own angst on the topic made me stop and think:
“Does it matter that a person’s political alignment, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and zip code (a reasonable proxy for household income) are now a matter of public, searchable record? Is her identity different now that some many facets of it are transparent? Or is it a matter of Mark Zukerberg’s vision—people have one identity, and transparency is good for relationships—being implicitly shared more widely across the planet? Just today, a review of Google Plus argued that people don’t mind having one big list of “friends,” even as Facebook scored poorly on this year’s customer satisfaction index.” (more…)
Data Privacy: Facebook, Facial Recognition, and Opting Out
I have been neck deep in the McKinsey Report working on my post about big data and the enormous impact it could have on the U.S. health care system when the whole Facebook facial recognition brouhaha came across my digital desktop. Followed by lots and lots of emails and calls from friends and family asking me what it means and what the heck (stronger words were used, but I like to keep my posts PG) they were supposed to do to TURN IT OFF. So, without further ado, my thoughts on this new great (sarcasm on) opt-out feature from Facebook as well as what appears to be a disturbing industry trend towards opt-out privacy settings.
First, full disclosure to any new readers: I do not have a Facebook page. Long story short: I decided long ago and far away to keep my personal life off the Internet (as much as possible). Yes, I am in marketing and yes, I love social media, but I live my professional life pretty much for everyone to see and I like to keep my private life, well, private. I also believe that everyone has the right to keep their private lives private (time to plug our book on “Privacy and Big Data”) no matter what those pesky personal information data collectors and users, like Facebook or Google or Amazon or fill-in-the-blank, would like you to do. (more…)
Friday Roundup: Data, Analytics, Privacy, Security and a PR Imbroglio
Happy Friday the 13th! It’s been a very busy week in story-land so in honor of this auspicious day, I thought I’d post about some of the more interesting stories that came across my Twitter feed, Google alerts, and email updates. So without further ado, let’s get cracking!
It’s All About the Data (Plus Analytics)
I don’t know about you, but I cannot wait to wade through McKinsey’s study on “Big Data: The Next Frontier for Innovation, Competition and Productivity.” Full disclosure: it comes in at 156 pages of fascinating information so it will take me a while to read and absorb, but once I’m done look for a post or two on my key takeaways. Until then, a recent New York Times article provides some of the highlights:
“It makes estimates of the potential benefits from deploying data-harvesting technologies and skills. The McKinsey research unit, for example, says the value to the health care system in the United States could be $300 billion a year, and that American retailers could increase their operating profit margins by 60 percent.”
Social Media Analytics: What is the Value of a Hug?
You know it’s going to be an interesting day when the CEO (that would be Terence) who also happens to be your esteemed co-blogger asks: “How much is a hug really worth?” This question was brought about by a recent article on how banks are using social media analytics tools to gain insights about their products and services. Here’s a direct quote from the article:
“Though she gets asked a lot about the ROI of social media, SunTrust’s Buckridee acknowledges that it’s hard to measure the ROI on goodwill generated through positive social media conversations. My question is, how do you measure the ROI of a hug? … Because that’s what we’re doing with the Twitter team. We’re putting a face to the brand — giving them a human voice and talking to them. We’re focused on building loyalty. … We’re starting to turn that thorny dialogue into happy customer tweets.”
Okay. Well, first of all, as most marketers will tell you, “hugs” have value. Actually, what most marketers will tell you is this: “You better be able to measure the value of that hug so that you can justify how much you are willing to spend to get it and show just how that ‘spend’ results in sales.” Because if you don’t, you may find yourself standing in front of a CEO (say from a fortune 500 company) and when you tell him that you grew Facebook friends by 20%, have the CEO reply, “I don’t care how many friends we have! I need more revenue!” True story (and believe me, every marketer has at least one of these). (more…)
Social Media Initiatives: Marketing Fundamentals are the Same, Vehicles are Different
Whenever you throw a bunch of marketers in a room and say, “let’s talk about doing some social media outreach,” I can guarantee you that there will be an energetic (yelling and gesticulating) conversation with some eye rolling involved. Whenever you throw a bunch of social media experts in a room and say, “Company A does not see the value of their social media programs,” I can guarantee you that there will be an energetic (yelling and gesticulating) conversation with some eye rolling involved. Whenever you throw a bunch of software engineers in a room who have come specifically to talk with you about what you would like to see in a social media analytics tool, I can guarantee you that there will be an energetic (me yelling and gesticulating) conversation with some eye rolling (engineering and product management team) involved.
Why all the storm and dirge? Well, social media has moved from an “interesting fad” to an entrenched channel but the jury is still out on how we marketers are going to “measure success.” A recent Harvard Business Review social media study found the following:
“… nearly two thirds of the participating organizations said that they are either currently using social media channels, or have plans in the works. However, only 12 percent of the companies surveyed said they felt they were effective users of social media. These were the companies most likely to use multiple channels; use metrics for reporting; have a strategy for social media usage; and integrate social media into their overall marketing strategy.” (more…)
On Social Media: The Real Marketing Transformation
We are going to be releasing the beta version of our Social Media Analytics solution in the near future and as a result, have been steeped in what I like to call the social media monitoring versus analytics debate. As a B2B marketer I have some thoughts on this topic as do some of my B2C marketing colleagues (hah! I feel a metrics faceoff in the making) but I am going to save that discussion for our beta announcement post. That being said, the whole topic of social media got me thinking about marketing in general and how the advent of social media has had a profound effect on the way we communicate.
In the “olden” days we B2B marketers were focused on the message as in “be on message.” We spent a great deal of time on the message platform, carefully crafting messages that articulated the pain of our targeted audience and spelled out our value in words that would resonate with them. To begin the process, we’d throw a bunch of executives, our top sales performers, and one or two product marketing folks into a room and begin with this simple exercise: if our company was a car, what kind of a car would it be? Pretty silly huh? And what has this to do with messaging? (more…)
Big Data Big Analytics 