One of the popular buzzwords these days is “Big Data,” but few people, even in companies that use analytics extensively, really know what this phrase means. A recent article, co-written by one of my favorite authors, Thomas Davenport, in the MIT Sloan Management Review titled How Big Data is Different does a great job of explaining the concept and showing how it can be applied to social media.
Big data starts with all the data your company is collecting but goes well beyond it. It includes clickstream data from your games, web analytics, social media content (Tweets, blogs, Facebook wall postings, Pinterest Pins, etc.), AppData information and even YouTube views. Big data, however, also includes everything from customer service requests to game development processes and learnings. As the article points out, very little of this information is formatted in the traditional structure of conventional databases. Companies do three things to capitalize on this plethora of data: Continue reading “What is big data and how can social game companies leverage it”
The Business of Social Games and Casino 