This
has little to do with retailing so tune out now if you wish, but I have a
problem with big data.
Big
data is the holy grail of business with companies spending millions to gain
information about us. That is essentially what billion dollar operations like
Facebook and Google do - finding out your preferences and then “helping” you by
directing information that is relevant to your data.
I
have just read an article that questions the relevance of different pieces of
data that are held about you. Your purchase of a concert ticket for instance (which
may not have been bought for your own use) suddenly becomes part of your data
pool. Then there is the product you purchased on eBay and wrote a review about.
That little action has become part of your data pool and, at least in a digital
sense defines you.
Let
me explain the problem with a personal example. I use an app called Flipboard for a lot of my
news gathering. My Flipboard feed has links with various news services and
subject matters. As editor of Victraders, I read a lot of articles about
retailing. I also have a passion for watches (usually watches I can’t afford) and
Flipboard knows that by storing data on my reading patterns.
So
my news feed these days is dominated by articles about retailing and watches.
Very clever you might say, but my fear is that the more focused stuff that
Flipboard channels to my news feed, the less aware I become about the rest of
the world.
In
short, I don’t really want somebody else forming an opinion about me based on
random data collection. And let’s remember they are doing this for money - big
data is big business but where is the quality control?
This is my data you are
playing with and I would like to be more confident that it is painting the
right picture.
By Greg Smith