Almost certainly, data is everywhere…everyday we ourselves are generating huge amounts of information: when we email, or  click on “like” on facebook, or “click on follow” on LinkedIn or tweet when we like a comment on Twitter, etc.

The types of data that we are generating has also changed. We now watch and share more “Youtube” videos on the go, or download and share more music on the go, or post more photos on the go. This results in most data generated being unstructured and also the speed at which we received it is much faster than a few years ago. In fact, 80% of the new data growth is of the form of videos, audio, photos, text, images, etc and millions of it is generated every second.

What makes Big Data even more challenging are the types of communications we use on social media, such as hashtags, colloquial speech, pictures, abbreviations and typos, etc. What do businesses do with the data? Collecting lots of data is easy….but applying analytical techniques to better make sense of the data, is not so easy!

Data is flowing in from all sorts of directions….blogs, websites, sensors, surveys, forums, etc….How do we make sense of all the data??? It seems the best thing to do, is to find out what works for you. What are your business problems or pain points? How can you use just the data that is related to your business problems or pain points? It is all about collecting data smartly, collecting on the data that will add value to your business!