With its acquisition of Lucky Sort, Twitter seems to be acknowledging that it’s a data company after all. The plan appears to be building a services that would do for Twitter equivalent to services such as Google Trends and Google Analytics. Read more »
A new study finds that Facebook likes and interest data could be used to map obesity prevalence. Read more »
Treato, a startup based in Israel, uses big data analytics to unearth patient insights about drugs and medical conditions from thousands of online health communities. Read more »
Facebook Director of Engineering Lars Rasmussen held an Ask Me Anything session of Reddit on Thursday to talk about Graph Search. Here’s what he had to say about the infrastructure underlying it. Read more »
New York-based data analytics startup SumAll announced that it has raised $6 million in a Series A round led by Battery Ventures and including Wellington Partners. Launched last year, SumAll helps smaller businesses analyze and visualize a comprehensive set of their data. Read more »
DataSift is partnering with Bitly to give its customers a way to understand not just what social content is being shared but what is actually being clicked on. That can give brands and publishers a way to create content that is more engaging. Read more »
Timed to Halloween and the presidential election, New York-based social loyalty startup CrowdTwist analyzed user data related to brand preferences for chocolate and political affiliation. Its data suggest that Democrats tend to prefer non-premium chocolate, while Republicans opt for more up-market sweets. Read more »
Social data pulled from online health forums and the comments section of blogs is helping patients learn about side effects to various drugs and could ultimately help them figure out the medications that suit them best. Read more »
New York-based 33Across, an ad tech startup that uses vast amounts of social data to target audiences, has raised an additional $13.1 million from Pelion Ventures, Flybridge Capital, Greycroft Partners, First Round Capital and others. Read more »
The last time Klout changed its social influence algorithms, the Internet erupted with criticism. But with the upcoming rollout of its next version, it seems the company is planning to tread more carefully. Read more »
With 10 terabytes of data generated everyday, AddThis (formerly called Clearspring) has access to a social graph that rivals Facebook. But unlike the social networking giant, AddThis wants to share its data. So I asked them how they can handle real-time processing on that many terabytes. Read more »
The emergence of the big data phenomenon is fundamentally changing everything from the way companies operate to the way people interact to how the world deals with outbreaks of infectious diseases. Here we highlight 10 case studies illustrating how big data is changing the world. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Ebay’s recent purchase of Hunch illustrates how social media has leveled the playing field for e-commerce recommendations engines. Mixing human-powered reviews with algorithm-powered recommendations will be a key driver of social ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
