I am going to be addressing an interesting question soon, as a speaker at an event coming up in March. The question is: "What if the twitter stream told us every time a can of soda is sold?” What about every physicians' prescription (not the patient info, just the prescription, maybe with the diagnosis code)? We already have some automated data on the twitterstream (blog postings, transit updates, job postings, amber alerts)... what happens when more and more data is put out there?
What ideas do you have about unusual, or ridiculous, or mundane, streams of data that could be added to the twitterstream, and what would the implications be - please email me richard@sigmapartners.com or leave comments below with those ideas.
What is all this about? It is about Social Media, and social media technology.
Social Media, also known as crowd-powered media, user-generated media, social networking and, generally Web 2.0, is (as I recently posted) a bigger trend than many people currently think. It is probably more than one trend, but that is also, as yet, unclear.
If you are interested in the social and commercial implications of these trends, and are in (or can be near) the Boston area on March 10, then consider participating in Jeff Pulver's Social Media Jungle Boston. I even have a $50-off code for you: JF2CFU6F.
If you can't make it in person, Twitter coverage will include the tag #smjbos.
Meanwhile, send me those ideas.
1 comment:
How about point-of-sale data from multiple retailers? Each item, time scanned, retailer and approximate location. You could measure trends (time- or geo-based), advertising effectiveness, correlations with world events, weather, etc.
Sadly, there all kinds of privacy, data security and general angst issues in the retail community about sharing data that would probably prevent this from ever happening...
Another idea would be real-time DVR activity (what people are watching where and when) PLUS the real-time activity for the network video sites (i.e. Hulu). It would kill off the need for Nielsen numbers and provide more detail about how people are actually consuming video.
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