I’ve been talking to a LOT of people lately about Big Data.  Frankly, it’s a term I keep hearing, and when I ask people about what is means to them, I get a ridiculous array of answers:

1. Big data is about analytics, social media, and reporting.

2. Big data is about privacy and ensuring that the data we generate online stays safe and is used responsibly.

3. Big data is about figuring out where to store the data that is generated in the cloud.

4. I don’t know what Big Data is, and no one really does.

5. Big data is everything.

6. Big Data is a buzz term that really doesn’t mean anything.

7. Big Data is about leveraging stored data and giving businesses new streams of revenue and insight.

So, I’m going to venture out here and add another voice to the discussion.

Big Data: Placing bets on who’s going to win

What’s NOT online these days?  We have our banking information, our photos, our medical records, our contacts, our messaging, our directions, our shopping habits, our libraries, our newspapers, our tweets, our location and movements, our blogs… the list goes on.  Everything has a place online these days and somewhere, all of our tracks our being traced and stored.  A little creepy?  Yes.  Unavoidable? Pretty much unless you live under a rock.  There is SO much information out there and the entrepreneurs that figure out how to best leverage and act upon that data have a colossal chance right now.  This is “Big Data.”

Big Data is about “the benefits we will gain by cleverly sifting through data to find and exploit new patterns and relationships.”  Big Data is big business, adding a new level of certainty to business decisions, and promoting new discoveries about nature and society.

The list of startups working in Big Data is infinite, and the easiest way to classify them would perhaps be to group them into verticals.  For example:

Retail Big Data, Medical Big Data, Geolocation Big Data, Privacy Big Data, Storage of Big Data, etc.

If anyone asks me, I’m going to say Big Data is about dealing with all the content we are all constantly generating, and the winning players are going to be the ones who can prove they have information that is valuable and predictive.  Then they just need to convince their customers their data analysis is what the business needs to stay relevant. Sounds easy, right?

Now go ahead, convince me I’m wrong.

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