Use for Big Data

Everyone is talking about Big Data these days (in between conversations about Kate Middleton pics, the 2012 election and, of course, the iPhone 5).

Big data is a buzzword, and I’m not even sure most people know what it means. See Chris Moschovitis’ and my interview with Media Post’s Charlene Weisler. (http://weislermedia.blogspot.com/) Shorthand it means crunching the numbers we have on our users to come up with things of value or actionable strategies.

Think of all the data Facebook potentially knows about me, for example. I’m a middle-aged woman in Manhattan whose interests include both horses and dogs, who has a friend who is a jewelry designer and who has an unusually large number of relatives. Multiply that by the 47 kazmillion Facebook profiles and what you have is Big Data.

But is anyone set up to really use big data in a meaningful way? If, for example, you wanted to do target advertising, could you do it effectively? Is it really “targeting” if your creative doesn’t align with your segmentation? How is that creative alignment even possible at this level of big data?

These are just some of the questions that come up around big data. Today, however,  I was thrilled to receive evidence of a small but meaningful use of big data. Amazon.com noticed that I was consistently deleting their AmazonLocal emails. So look what I got…

Amazon is crunching the data to produce a better user experience and stop sending useless emails.

Bravo!