Facebook knows something about big data — it collects more data and has built more tools than almost anybody else. Here, Facebook’s Jay Parikh and Accel Partners’ Ping Li talk about what lessons big data startups can take from Facebook to build businesses that can succeed. Read more »
Rather than rely on Hadoop or any other popular data-management tools to build a platform for democratizing data science, Precog decided to build its own system from scratch. That makes Precog stand out from the crowd, but it also means there’s little room for error. Read more »
Sumall, a New York data analytics startup targeting small and medium sized online stores, mined its data to determine how time on site translates into revenue, which it says can be a helpful indicator in e-commerce. Read more »
Carter S. won his first-ever Kaggle competition — our own GigaOM WordPress Challenge — using a brute force method of data science he calls overkill analytics. Rather than spend untold hours perfecting complex models, Carter used simple algorithms and let powerful microprocessors do the rest. Read more »
Mobile analytics provider Localytics has raised $5.5 million led by Polaris Venture Partners. The money will help Localytics launch a new automated mobile app marketing platform that allows developers to message their customers and encourage them to take certain actions or make purchases. Read more »
Cloud analytics provider GoodData has a new suite of offerings that let users connect their various data sources into a single platform that handles the analysis and visualization for them. It’s made possible by a confluence of technology trends that enable analytics as a service. Read more »
Cisco wants to rethink the big data business model by putting infomediaries at the center of vast data-sharing networks. It’s a vision of easy access to data and resources, where analyses can be conducted and acted upon in real time, but it’s a long way off. Read more »
South Bend, Ind., is using a sensor network and IBM software to prevent its sewer system from dumping sewage into rivers or backing up into citizens’ home, but it’s just a microcosm of global trend toward solving urban maladies using big data. Read more »
Google designed BigQuery as a cloud service for running fast queries against massive datasets, but with lofty ambitions there’s always room to take a step back. Now, users that don’t require super speed can run batch queries, and can connect to the service using Microsoft Excel. Read more »
Placed is broadening its horizons by letting mobile web developers take advantage of its unique approach to location analytics. Previously available for mobile apps, Placed cross-references location data against a massive database to paint a picture of where apps or sites are being used most. Read more »
Splunk is taking its machine data show to the cloud with a new SaaS offering called Storm. It’s essentially Splunk’s flagship software tuned for cloud-generated data, but it plays into a big opportunity for fusing cloud computing with big data. Read more »
Topsy, one of only a handful of companies with access to Twitter’s entire data stream of information, is releasing Tuesday a pro analytics service that will give brands greater access to that information. Read more »
Although it’s still a work in progress, 0xdata thinks it has the answer to the problem of doing advanced statistical analysis at scale: Build on HDFS for scale, use the widely known R programming language and hide it all under a simple interface. Read more »
German startup ParStream raised a $5.6 million Series A round for its analytic database that goes head to head with larger vendors such as HP Vertica, EMC Greenplum and ParAccel. It’s a highly competitive database market right now, so we’ll see if ParStream has legs. Read more »
Satyamev Jayate, one of India’s highest-rated television shows, is using data as a means to effect meaningful change. The show’s producers are aggregating and analyzing the millions of messages they receive on controversial issues to do everything from planning future episodes to pushing for political change. Read more »
Analytics startup Birst thinks it can make data warehouses more useful by letting business users inside of them. Its new Distributed Business Analytics product puts departmental sandboxes right inside the warehouse, letting users interact with all the data they need from a central location. Read more »
Mobile analytics companies provide app publishers with data about their users. Hiptype, a Y Combinator startup, wants to do the same thing for ebooks. That could be huge for data-starved book publishers — except that for now, Hiptype only works on platforms that support HTML5. Read more at paidContent »
German mobile analytics firm Adeven says that nearly two-thirds of software in iOS App Store are ‘zombies’ — thanks to a new tool that has counted 400,000 apps which get no downloads, are invisible to users and have no ranking. Read more »
There’s so much data available and such powerful tools for analyzing it that the world might be a lot better off if politicians listened to the data first, rather than their parties or constituents. Already, data is showing ways to limit everything from traffic to AIDS. Read more »
Flurry, which has helped developers measure and monetize their mobile apps, is now poised to help them build their apps too. The company announced it has bought Seattle-based Trestle, a provider of mobile backend services, and will offer a set of cloud services for developers. Read more »
The market for business analytics software grew 14 percent in 2011 and will hit $50.7 billion in revenue by 2016, according to IDC. The category will grow at a 9.8-percent-a-year rate until then, driven in part by the hype around big data. Read more »
Flash-based storage pioneer Fusion-io says it has developed a method for extending a system’s memory from DRAM into Fusion-io’s NAND-based storage tier, enabling the possibility of bigger, cheaper in-memory applications than are currently possible. Read more »
Hey, mobile developers, have you ever wondered where users are when they interact with your apps — like down to the level of whether they’re in a Starbucks or the McDonald’s right across the street? A startup called Placed can tell you so you can act accordingly. Read more »
Between its CEO search and patent war with Facebook, the past few months have been especially rocky for long-beleaguered Yahoo. But, on schedule, the company today announced that it is rolling out its big data ad tool Genome. Read more »
Software as a service is a great for deploying applications across a company. The flip side is that it ends up creating data silos across vendors. Roger Sippl’s Cloud Connection aims to bridge those silos so users can use their data as they see fit. Read more »
ZestCash, the startup co-founded by former Google CIO and VP of Engineering Douglas Merrill to provide short-term loans to the underserved, has changed its name to ZestFinance and its business model, as well. Now essentially an underwriting service for lenders, can ZestFinance remain ethical? Read more »
According to physicist Geoffrey West, the world’s cities have what one might call a growing problem. As they grow bigger, their problems grow worse, which means it takes an ever-faster pace of innovation to keep things in check. Big data techniques might provide the answer. Read more »
Big data has always had a place in the world of systems management, but it’s sweet spot might be in the cloud. Especially with a new model such as cloud computing, there could be a real value in learning from what your peers are doing. Read more »
According to a new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit (commissioned by IT consulting giant Capgemini), corporate executives are starting to figure out that big data matters and how to leverage it, even if they haven’t fully come around on the concept. Read more »
A startup called Datahero launched on Thursday with a new cloud service that makes visualizing data as simple as a few mouse clicks, and $1 million in seed funding. The company’s ultimate goal is to make big data something you or I could do. Read more »
If you’ve ever wondered what big data means at an individual level, this realization about sums it up: “I could either keep dying my hair or retire a year earlier.” It’s those types of realizations Intuit hopes its heavy big data use will help uncover. Read more »
Consumers are feeling pretty perky about things going into Memorial Day, according to new IBM sentiment analysis. That means stores and hotels might have reason to smile over the holiday weekend, as people seem to want to travel — and shop — over the long weekend. Read more »
Big data is an intimidating concept for publishers who don’t collect much info about their customers already. A first step is to think about “data-driven decision making,” and little data, says bitly’s Hilary Mason. Read more at paidContent »
Even if you haven’t heard of LivePerson, chances are you’ve encountered one of its products while browsing online. It’s the company behind those pop-up windows offering real-time chat with a representative, and it uses big data to decide which visitors are worth what type of attention. Read more »
Howcast, a New York producer of quality how-to videos, has gotten to 1 billion videos streamed since launching in 2008. The company has leaned heavily on data to inform all its decisions and ensure that its collection of 15,000 videos can keep producing revenue. Read more »
Yahoo is looking to leverage its big data prowess with a new tool for marketers called Genome. It looks like an acknowledgement that while Yahoo might not rule the the web anymore, it knows a heck of a lot about analytics. Read more »
The IT hype machine has everyone jumping on the big data bandwagon. But before we start saving every scrap of data in the enterprise for fear that we will miss a nugget of insight, shouldn’t we focus on what we already have? Read more »
Riding a new wave of growth, analytics startup Mixpanel today announced that it had raised $10 million in new funding from Andreesen Horowitz and other investors. Read more »
Data warehouse veteran Teradata announced on Wednesday it is buying German software company eCircle in an attempt to gain a stronger presence in fast-growing world of marketing data. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but this is the second marketing-specific acquisition Teradata has made in […] Read more »
It’s beginning to look like there will be no free-standing analytics companies left. IBM is buying Vivisimo for the “discovery and navigation” expertise that companies use to access and analyze (what else?) big data. The news come a week after IBM bought Varicent, another analytics company. Read more »
