Why You Are Ignoring The Most Important Data | Social Media Explorer | Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight | Scoop.it

The current fad of big data has caused marketers to ignore the requirement that humans need to analyze conversations...

 

...Big data is the allure of more. More information. More access to behavior. Opportunities for more sophisticated analysis. The thinking goes likes this: If we know every move people make then we not only know everything, but we can predict everything. As business people we love it because the information is finite, scalable and measurable.

 

It’s ironic that big data has such an allure in an age when some of the most important information happening online is coming out of conversations. And the way to analyze online conversations is to read them, participate in them and try to understand them without a formula.

 

Conversations are not data. Anyone who has ever tried to analyze them through sentiment analysis knows this. If you ever watched Star Trek, you can imagine clearly that even an advanced, science fiction character like Data, misunderstood human conversation....