Data Never Sleeps

EVERY MINUTE as reported in June of 2012, here is some data of the ‘DATA’ being generated:

  • Facebook users share 684,478 pieces of content
  • Consumers spend $ 272,070 on web shopping
  • Twitter users send over 100,000 tweets
  • Apple receives about 47,000 APP downloads
  • Brands & Organizations on Facebook receive 34,722 “likes”
  • TUMBLR Blog owners publish 27,778 new posts
  • Instagram users share 3,600 new photos
  • FLICKR users add 3,125 new photos
  • Foursquare users perform 2083 check ins
  • new websites are created
  • WordPress users publish 347 new blog posts
  • Mobile web receives 217 new users
  • Youtube users upload 48 hours of new video
  • Last but not the least, Email users send 204,166,667 messages !!!!!!

YES, this is just a part of the data being generated EVERY MINUTE. Isn’t this mind boggling ? This data just keeps growing with no signs of slowing down. The global internet population is growing at break neck speed and is currently estimated to be around 2.4 Billion people.

Everywhere you look, the quantity of information in the world is soaring. According to one estimate, mankind created 150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005. This year, it will create 1,200 exabytes. Merely keeping up with this flood, and storing the bits that might be useful, is difficult enough. Analyzing it, to spot patterns and extract useful information, is harder still. Even so, the data deluge is already starting to transform business, government, science and everyday life. It has great potential for intelligent outcomes, as long as consumers, companies and governments make the right choices about when to restrict the flow of data, and when to encourage it.

Wal-Mart, a retail giant, handles more than 1m customer transactions every hour, feeding databases estimated at more than 2.5 petabytes—the equivalent of 167 times the books in America’s Library of Congress. Facebook is home to 40 billion photos. And decoding the human genome involves analyzing 3 billion base pairs—which took ten years the first time it was done, in 2003, but can now be achieved in one week.

All these examples tell the same story: that the world contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is getting ever vaster ever more rapidly. This makes it possible to do many things that previously could not be done: spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime and so on. Managed well, the data can be used to unlock new sources of economic value, provide fresh insights into science and hold governments to account.