While doing social media analytics research, I came across this interesting analysis by Marc Smith (no relationship).
Using NodeXL as one of the graphing tools, the graph shows the connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word bigdata when queried on February 27, 2012, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another. The green lines are “follows” relationships, blue lines are “reply” or “mentions” relationships.
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A colleague asked me to comment on a recent article “
But, while I agree with these points, Casnocha does not give concrete examples on how to use modern technology/social tools to realize value from them. For example, LinkedIn is THE network tool used by professional to source a network. Right? FaceBook tends to be used for personal and some professional network sourcing, but does not provide any real relationship information (connections like in LinkedIn).
POST UPDATE:
A lot of folks know that I have done some interesting things in my life. From flying jets off aircraft carriers to running nuclear reactors on submarines to building artificial brains in boxes in laboratories. All fun stuff, none of which I could have ever done without the help and support of very talented friends and team mates. So it doesn’t surprise me too much when someone asks me to talk about some of the scariest places I been. My response often confounds the asker in ways that can be profound. What is my response, you ask?
Usually at about this point I see in their face the “oh man, I shouldn’t have ask” kind of look. You know the one I am talking about. It is that one that people give when they realize they want to be some place else, but need to stay and listen out of respect. That’s the look.
So, why all this pontification around death, not knowing what we don’t know, life, the universe, and everything else? Because we are on the technological brink of being capable of systematically exploring this deep dark space in ways that where never possible just a few years ago. We are capable of discovering new endless opportunities by just looking through all that data (FaceBook, Twitter, CRM, etc.) we take for granted everyday. This is the world of Big Data and these profound outcomes are why this new capability is important to us all.
Here are five interesting uses of big data that are happening every day:
These applications do beg the question about privacy, “When does now-casting – search through massive amounts of data to predict individual behavior – violate personal privacy?”
Curtis Hougland, the CEO of Attention (PR firm), spoke at Wire’s Disruptive By Design Conference about social media strategies being used by marketers (see video of speech 
The Catastrophe Modeling ecosystem, used in insurance and reinsurance, is a good example of the types of traditional computational platforms that are undergoing an assault from the exponential changes seen in data. Not only are commercially available simulation and modeling tools incapable of closing the forecasting capabilities gaps in the near future, but most organizations are not addressing the needed changes in the human factor (data scientists and functional behavioral analysts). The net for those insurance/reinsurance companies that rely on these old school techniques is 1) reduced accuracy in understanding physical effects of catastrophic events, 2) reduced precision in quantifying the direct and indirect cost of a catastrophe, and 3) increased blind spots for new and emergent catastrophic events, coming from combinations and permutations of existing events, as well as the creation of new ones.
