The Emerging Social Data Ecosystem

Thought Experiments

It’s Social Data Week, and I spent Monday at DataSift’s San Francisco conference. Like Big Boulder (which is produced by Gnip and is now entering its third year), Social Data Week is focused on the emerging dialogue around social data, its stakeholders, challenges, opportunities, use cases, best practices and, most critically, its emerging ecosystem.

To some degree, these recent conversations around social data remind me of food. (Stay with me; I have a point.) It’s hard to throw a rock in San Francisco these days without hitting a restaurant whose menu gives as much attention to its sources (Dirty Girl tomatoes, Star Route arugula, Point Reyes blue cheese) as it does to its preparation. And it’s in response to customer demand; today, many of us want to know where our food comes from, what’s in it, and, as importantly, what isn’t.

For business, the provenance of social data is becoming…

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