Intuit Trends - Social Data on Small Businesses

"Social data" is the buzzword that describes sharing aggregate or summarized data collected from or contributed by large numbers of users. 

A good example of social data is Intuit Trends, an early alpha product available on Intuit Labs.  Trends uses aggregated company financial data collected from the online version of the accounting package Quickbooks. 

The application lets small business owners, managers and their advisers explore industry financial trends, share observations, and compare their performance with their peers and/or competitors.

Social data applications only work if data specific to individuals or companies is kept private and secure.  Intuit Trends and other social data applications accomplish this by only providing access to aggregate or summary data, thus protecting the privacy of the data sources.

While the buzzword is new, the concept is not.  Industrial companies have long provided product service and performance data based on information collected from their customers.  But this has been expensive and hard to do.

The Internet in general - and cloud computing in particular - has changed this.  With data rapidly moving from individual PCs and servers to the cloud, social data applications are much cheaper and easier to develop and deliver.

We've recently been briefed on over a dozen social data applications currently under development.  These applications target a range of industrial and consumer markets.

Social data will be a hot field in the coming years and we expect substantial growth in the number, range and power of these applications. 

Disclosure:  Emergent Research has done work for Intuit in the past year.

Comments

[RedHotFranchises]

Thanks for sharing the fresh information.
Sounds like Social Data may very well be the next best weapon that can be utilized to have a better edge on the competitive market.
I would definitely keep an eye on this.

[128gb usb drive]

Besides the obvious, this kind of product integration has broad implications for how you select and implement software. As noted in the conference call today accompanying this announcement, a software architectural revolution is going on. You no longer need to have everything locked up onto one computer. Software today more and more is a hybrid combination. You will have some software downloaded to your company computers, and other software that you and your employees access as a service online.