The Age of Big Data
“It’s a revolution. We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched.”-- says Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. [1]
"They are our nuclear codes."
-- Ben LaBolt, the campaign spokesman responded so when mentioned about the data analysis help Obama win. [2]
Welcome to the Age of Big Data. Data flows everywhere in the contemporary era, and it is growing rapidly all the time. IDC, a technology research firm, estimates that the data is growing at 50 percent a year, or more than doubling every two years. It’s not just more streams of data, but entirely new ones. For example, there are now countless digital sensors worldwide in industrial equipment, automobiles, electrical meters and shipping crates. They can measure and communicate location, movement, vibration, temperature, humidity, even chemical changes in the air. [1]
Data analysis has been widely applied in various industries, business, science, sports, advertising and public health, almost every area we could imagine. Data-driven discovery and decision-making are playing an increasingly important role in our life. Recently, An article in the Time briefly describes how Obama beat Romney by the data collected, stored and analyzed.
Social Network Analysis
Despite various approaches for data analysis have been introduced and applied, most of them assume that what people do, think, and feel is independent of who they know. This obviously brought bias on result when the analysis relates to human behavior. In this case, Social Network Analysis, which based on the assumption that people are all interdependent, could show its great power.SNA has gained significant attention in recent years, largely due to the success of social networking and media sites, and the consequent availability of a huge mass of social network data. As the concepts and major algorithms of SNA have been introduced in our lecture notes, I will not repeat them here.
SNA applies to a wide range of business problems, including: [3]
Another paper, Social Network Analysis and Mining for Business Applications also provides detail about the business application of SNA, including more applications and challenges for SNA.[4]
Most recently since the IPO of Facebook, it seems that the investments on SNS have been cooling down. An obvious factor is the revenue models for most SNS are ambiguous. However, I believe that with more studies and applications on social network mining and analysis, situation will go much better. (One typical case is Sina Weibo)
Reference
1. STEVE LOHR, The Age of Big Data, February 11, 2012, The New York Times.
2. Michael Scherer, Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win, Nov. 07, 2012
3. Kate Ehrlich & Inga Carboni, Inside Social Network Analysis.
4. Bonchi, F., Castillo, C., Gionis, A., and Jaimes, A. 2011. Social Network Analysis and Mining for Business Applications
Picture Source: Greenbookblog
Revised on 28 Nov 2012
- Knowledge Management and Collaboration. SNAs can help locate expertise, seed new communities of practice, develop cross-functional knowledge-sharing, and improve strategic decision-making across leadership teams.
- Team-building. SNAs can contribute to the creation of innovative teams and facilitate post-merger integration. For example, SNAs can reveal which individuals are most likely to be exposed to new ideas.
- Human Resources. SNAs can identify and monitor the effects of workforce diversity, on-boarding and retention, and leadership development. For instance, an SNA can reveal whether or not mentors are creating relationships between mentees and other employees.
- Sales and Marketing. SNAs can help track the adoption of new products, technologies, and ideas. They can also suggest communication strategies.
- Strategy. SNAs can support industry ecosystem analysis as well as partnerships and alliances. They can pinpoint which firms are linked to critical industry players and which are not.
Another paper, Social Network Analysis and Mining for Business Applications also provides detail about the business application of SNA, including more applications and challenges for SNA.[4]
Most recently since the IPO of Facebook, it seems that the investments on SNS have been cooling down. An obvious factor is the revenue models for most SNS are ambiguous. However, I believe that with more studies and applications on social network mining and analysis, situation will go much better. (One typical case is Sina Weibo)
Reference
1. STEVE LOHR, The Age of Big Data, February 11, 2012, The New York Times.
2. Michael Scherer, Inside the Secret World of the Data Crunchers Who Helped Obama Win, Nov. 07, 2012
3. Kate Ehrlich & Inga Carboni, Inside Social Network Analysis.
4. Bonchi, F., Castillo, C., Gionis, A., and Jaimes, A. 2011. Social Network Analysis and Mining for Business Applications
Picture Source: Greenbookblog
Revised on 28 Nov 2012
Your article is so amazing! Specifically, the applications of SNA indeed could resolve and explain some business problems, the examples just as your said knowledge management and collaboration, team-building, human resource sales and marketing and strategy. These questions we always come to, but feel hard to give reasonable explanations. After reading your article, I believe almost of business strategies are no basis. Besides that, I feel there is something we don’t know behind the Facebook. But you could dig it deeper and I am waiting for your share.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your reading and reply. (I just thought there would be no comment for this article.) In my opinion, SNA has limitations also. Compared with other data analysis tools, its application is more narrow. But when we study on human behavior through data, it is definitely useful and more accurate.
DeleteAn important theory on which Facebook based is Six degrees of separation, which is also an SNA. SNA is more likely internal use, so even if it has been applied into some algorithms, we could hardly tell it. But I'll have a try if time permits.
Your opinion that SNA has limitations is really constructive,and I believe that through our further study, the limitation will be solved.
ReplyDeleteI read the 3rd article, and somehow I feel something missing.
ReplyDeleteWell it opens a window to show the significance of SNA on business functions such as knowledge management, team-building, HR etc. However, from an outsider's point of view, to view the role that SNA plays in business operations, basically my answer would be: everything. You know, people work, people operate, people coordinate in the whole business planning, construction and operation. So it's really trivial to give such opinions.
However the author didn't really show some evidence that SNA would work. Examples would be nice, but none.
So my doubt is whether this viewpoint really stands and how you think about it. Thanks.
I'm glad that you read the article very carefully, and raised good questions.
DeleteThe example seems not very persuasive to you, but I suppose it's a real case (maybe I'm wrong).
Of coz, relationship is complicated, an SNA analysis just provides a quantified reference for us. Just like any other data analysis tools, it could be wrong or meaningless sometimes.
Despite [3] lists many, but I believe the most significant applications for SNA in business are marketing and PR. SNA could help companies know more about their customers. In other aspects, quantifying SNA is not that necessary.
I'm afraid that SNA analysis could not be applied to everywhere in business operation. For some positions, relationship does not that matter. And we could not ignore this: SNA could be time and money consuming.
After all, SNA may disclose something that other data analysis could not, this is what it values I believe.
Additionally, [4] provides many business applications if you are not convinced with my reply and still doubt the application on SNA. It's helpful and I'm considering add the applications into the article. Thank you.
DeleteYou research SNA from another point of view that we enter into the big data age. Some problems existed in a wide range of business such as knowledge management and collaboration, team-building, human resource sales and marketing and strategy, are waiting to be solved by SNA. I am waiting you to share more opinions about the relationship between SNA and the marketing.
ReplyDeleteSocial Network consists such a huge data...
ReplyDeleteAnd I think that's why the research of data-mining get more and more important nowadays, actually with a good knowledge of data-mining, you will be more efficient and accurate in SNA, because one of the main function of data-mining is to select the useful data and drop the useless.
Age of Big Data is really fantastic. we all wait the coming of that situation. Actually , in some extent, it's really coming. Cloud, data, analysis...thinking about all the items. definitelly geilivable...Thank you for you explaination.
ReplyDeleteIt is really Big Data. Thanks for the information about SNA. Totally agree with you regarding to areas which could make use of SNA theories.
ReplyDelete-.- Big data is a hot word nowadays.
ReplyDeleteand big data is bought by web 2.0, but actually, how big is a big data? just for curious :)
Impressive and informative. Thanks for the sharing
ReplyDeleteThe example you refer to is very useful for me. Thank you for sharing.
ReplyDeleteIn the 2012 United States presidential election, a statistician named Nate Silver has correctly predicted the winner of all 50 states. I think that is a perfect example of the great power of Big Data. SNA may provide us the possibility in the future that to survey people's characters, shopping preferences，political views just by analysing their online behavior. A good article to reveal the importance of SNA to us.
ReplyDelete