Chapter 2
Riding the Social Data Wave: Churning Data into Information
In This Chapter
- Deciding what data matter
- Applying your perspective to social media data
- Understanding the art and science of data analysis
- Establishing your virtual Network Operations Center
Collectively we’ve produced about 800,000 petabytes of digital data here on earth thus far. To put that into perspective, in a single petabyte you could fill 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets, or watch 13.3 years’ worth of HD TV, or if you’re hungry, one petabyte equates to roughly 52 tons of pepperoni pizza. So, 800,000 petabytes constitutes a staggering volume of data and represents a 62 percent growth of digital data creation in a single year. Findings from IDC’s global digital output survey projected that we would grow data stores nearly as fast in 2010, and they’re still counting to find out if they were correct. They also estimated that we’d surpass 1.2 zettabytes of digital data collected and stored. That’s 1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes of data. According to Andreas Weigend, the former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com, the numbers would be even larger. He projected that in the single year 2009, individuals would generate more data than previously existed in the entire history of mankind, and give
or take a few petabytes, his projection was correct. Now, I argue that we’ve been producing data all along; it’s just that now we’re attempting to collect it all. But that’s just semantics because by anyone’s ...
