From July of 2011 to July of 2012 over $75 bil­lion has been spent in social busi­ness IPOs and over $1.5 bil­lion in social busi­ness acqui­si­tions. Right now, many of the social net­works have become well-fund­ed pub­lic com­pa­nies or part of larg­er com­pa­nies. These social media net­works include Face­book, LinkedIn, Bud­dy Media, Vit­rue, Radi­an 6 and BazaarVoice.

Michelle Zhou, who is a senior man­ag­er at IBM Research, is work­ing with her team at IBM to gain a deep under­stand­ing of peo­ple. This includes under­stand­ing their per­son­al­i­ties and needs. Her team then uses this infor­ma­tion to cre­ate hyper-per­son­al­ized engage­ments with these people.

Cur­rent­ly, Zhou’s team is look­ing at how they can use big data that is gen­er­at­ed on social media, to exam­ine brand per­cep­tion, as well as the peo­ple who voice these per­cep­tions. The team’s goal is to help com­pa­nies serve their cus­tomers bet­ter by giv­ing them what they want at the time they want it. Social media assists com­pa­nies in find­ing peo­ple with sim­i­lar interests.

Big Data Is Defined Accord­ing To The Four Vs

1. Vol­ume — the scale of the data.
2. Verac­i­ty — how truthful/accurate the data is.
3. Veloc­i­ty — how fast the data is moving.
4. Vari­ety — dif­fer­ent forms of the data.

Today, tra­di­tion­al data, includ­ing sales trans­ac­tions and books, are cap­tured and dig­i­tal­ized to make them more acces­si­ble. New kinds of data, such as mobile activ­i­ty and social media, are gen­er­at­ed at an amaz­ing pace.

The Insight Of Big Data

Some say that big data is just anoth­er way to sell more, but Zhou states that a com­pa­ny under­stand­ing its con­sumers and poten­tial con­sumers allows the com­pa­ny to serve every­one better.

Ana­lyt­ics is not just tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing, it can also be used as a pub­lic ser­vice. Big data is used to help an indi­vid­ual find the prod­uct or ser­vice he wants and has the abil­i­ty to help a gov­ern­ment agency in its response to a crisis.

Could This Be An Indi­ca­tion As To The Pow­er of Big Data?

The hus­band of Maris­sa Mey­er, who is the CEO of Yahoo, launch­es a big data invest­ment fund. Zack Bogue has just launched Data Col­lec­tive (DCVC), which is a new big data firm that is worth watch­ing. DCVC has been work­ing off a fund of only $10 mil­lion and has already made some extreme­ly impres­sive investments.

The peo­ple who are par­tic­i­pat­ing in this ven­ture bring an enor­mous amount of col­lec­tive expe­ri­ence to the table. Data Col­lec­tive boasts three more part­ners that are in high demand, includ­ing Michael Driscoll, Matt Ocko, Brad­ford Cross, as well as anoth­er 35 investors.

The 35 investors were not named, how­ev­er, the list of their pre­vi­ous invest­ments were men­tioned. Those invest­ments include some of the most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies of our time.

• Face­book.
• Square.
• Verisign.
• Xen­Source.
• Zyn­ga.
• Plat­fo­ra.
• Bran­chOut.
• Appren­da.

DCVC is focus­ing on the up and com­ing big data mar­ket and is look­ing to be an ear­ly-stage investor. Accord­ing to DCVC, the Equi­ty Part­ners will all share in the finan­cial upside of the fund. In its press release launch, DCVC stat­ed that togeth­er they are capa­ble of cre­at­ing a much larg­er fund.