The Growing Power of Social Data

Mint, the personal finance company recently acquired by Intuit, released data showing that selected retailers had strong black friday sales. 

The data comes from Mint users.  Mint is an online personal finance tool used by over 2 million people to help manage their finances.  Mint aggregates user spending data to create indices - in this case showing black friday sales versus last year for a group of major retailers including Best Buy, Sears, Target and others.

This is an excellent example of social data, which is actual information or data aggregated from a large number of sources.  With the growth of the Internet and cloud computing (also called software as a service), there are a steadily increasing number of large databases that contain actual data on a wide variety of topics.

Most social data is collected by aggregating customer data.  WalMart, for example, is famous for their vast point of sale and inventory databases.  Their data is so comprehensive that the US Center for Disease Control monitors use their sales data on health products to help identify potential epidemics and other health problems.

Other firms that make extensive use of social data and data mining include American Express, Safeway, airlines, banks, insurance companies and many others. 

Most of these companies keep their social data to themselves. Social data often creates substantial competitive advantage.  Just ask WalMart's competitors and suppliers. 

But increasingly firms are releasing social data to partners, customers and the public.  Mint, for example, allows its users to compare their spending patterns with others.  This is a valuable benefit for their customers. 

With more and more online data being created and stored, the amount of social data and social data applications will continue to rapidly grow.  With it comes a wide range of privacy issues and concerns - especially when data is collected and aggregated from multiple sources.  But we save those issues for another time.  

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

Comments

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Social networking sites on the Internet may seem like a strange subject for a blog usually dedicated to construction economics, but please bear with me. There is relevance. One of the next big things in information technology or high-tech will be social networking sites.As social functionality and community behavior becomes more popular and more pervasive across the Web, anonymous information about user attributes and interests, stated and demonstrated through social behavior, becomes a valuable resource for improving campaign delivery and performance.

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Social data and networking are definitely the next growing trends and may become a necessity for most Business Owners. While it's still in its infancy, the Fortune 500 Companies have already used Social networking to its marketing advantage so now would be the best time to use social bookmarking as part of your marketing strategies.

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Obviously there is still a lot to do on the global poverty front. But this is still good news.