Data is a Product

Much like one of Santa’s Elves I’ve been working hard to bring you the latest data blog - not so much Product this time, but certainly data! All wrapped up in a pretty bow. Now, before we all get stuck into Sprouts and Turkey on the 25 th (I’ll be avoiding that one this year by taking extreme measures – leaving the Country!) I wanted to somehow combine the themes of Christmas and Data. What I’ve come up with is of course something akin to Good King Wenceslas combined with the Dr Who Special. To start with we’ll look at Christmas cards. David Cameron (aka Santa) has been busily sending cards to his nearest and dearest. Included on his list this year are the President of Kyrgyzstan, the Prime Minister of Chile and of course, the Pope. The Guardian have a great article about the full list and who’s made Dave’s ‘Naughty’ list (we’re looking at you South Africa). Next up, Christmas Presents. I’ve found some nice data on US Christmas Shopping habits from last year. Did

Firstly, thanks to Duncan Ross for inspiring this post (@duncan3ross) about how organisations are using 'Free' products to get data they can monetise for profit. I'll be looking at this from both sides of the fence. In this post, we'll tackle what you, the consumer gets from these 'Free' products. This way of providing products and services is often called the 'Freemium' model and is one that has become very popular over the last couple of years. Anyone with a smartphone will probably have some free software in the form of apps featuring enraged feathered creatures or links to your favourite social network. You'll often see adverts pop up in these apps and games which is obviously a way for the developers to make money. However, how do they know which advert is going to appeal most to you? We'll cover this piece in more detail in the next post. Let's look first at what you get.

Last night, I watched the excellent documentary on BBC 2 about the growth of Facebook and how they use the data created by users to make money. If you didn't catch it, have a look on the iPlayer for Inside Facebook. So, Facebook take your data and use it to do several things. Firstly, they use your friends, links between them and your interests to suggest new friends to you. Very helpful! This often means that you end up with about 200 people in your network who can see what you do or like and vice-versa. That's actually quite helpful and is probably why you joined.. to communicate! Next up, you Like various company pages, band pages and so on. Again, your friends can see this. More importantly, Facebook can see what you Like, who your friends are and the basic details about you. For example, you are Male, live in London, went to school in Cambridge and are currently single. This then allows Facebook to sell you adverts based upon your details. It also allows the compan