Category Archives: Research
New Report: The Data-Driven Business
As we are continually reminded, data is everywhere, but what are organizations actually doing with it? My new report, “The Data-Driven Business: How Industry Leaders Use Data to Create Value”, looks at how data, big or small, is informing and … Continue reading
New Report: Content Marketing Performance: A Framework to Measure Real Business Impact
About a year ago, Rebecca Lieb and I had a series of conversations about the emerging need for analytics that would allow content and marketing professionals to evaluate the success of their content strategies. We discussed the predominance of “volume … Continue reading
What’s the ROI of Trust? Results of the Edelman Trust Barometer 2015
Each year, Edelman conducts research that culminates in the publication of its Trust Barometer (disclosure: I worked at Edelman when the first report was published). It’s been long enough now–15 years and counting–that the study has seen meaningful shifts in patterns of trust: … Continue reading
New Research: What Do We Do with All This Big Data?
In September, I had the opportunity to speak at TED@IBM in San Francisco about the implications of a data-rich world, and what we can do, as businesspeople, citizens, and consumers, to use it to our best advantage. Since then, I’ve … Continue reading
Data Everywhere: Lessons from Big Data in the TV Industry
During the past several years, the television industry has changed dramatically, spurred by device proliferation, changing distribution methods, and the increasing popularity of social media. Today, TV is everywhere. It’s on your phone, your tablet, your gaming console and someday will be … Continue reading
Facebook’s “Emotional Contagion” Experiment: Was it Ethical?
Update, June 29: Co-author Adam D. I. Kramer posts a response here. By now, you’ve probably heard that data scientists at Facebook recently published a study in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science revealing that, in their words, “emotional states can … Continue reading
The Big Boulder Initiative: An Industry Association for Social Data
Last week, several hundred academics, data scientists, programmers, marketers, analysts, entrepreneurs and others gathered in Boulder for the Big Boulder Conference, an event centering on the emerging social data industry. While Gnip had hosted the event in the past, this … Continue reading
Social Data for Social Good: Five Lessons from Academia
In business, we spend a lot of time trying to understand social data and other forms of big data for strategic advantage: to make business decisions, increase revenue, reduce costs, improve relationships with customers and spur innovation. But what about … Continue reading
2014: The Year of Data Disruption
Linguist Geoff Nunberg’s annual “Word of the Year” posts offer an instructive peek into the American psyche. In 2012, he chose “Big Data”. In 2013, his pick was (no, not “twerk”) “selfie.” Nunberg makes his selections based on dominant news stories, … Continue reading
From Shopping Carts to Poisoned Names, Every Data Point Tells a Story
Every so often, I’d like to profile someone who’s doing interesting things with data. Meet Hilary Parker of Etsy (yes, that’s her in the photo). While at Strata & Hadoop World last week, I had the chance to attend Ignite, a … Continue reading
Thought Experiments 