Josh Jones-Dilworth is the founder and CEO of Jones-Dilworth, Inc. a PR consultancy focused on bringing early stage technologies to market. He blogs at joshdilworth.com.
A lot has changed since this post’s forbearer last December, so much so that I think it’s safe to say that data, particularly as it relates to marketing and social media, is no longer an annual topic, but rather a daily one.
Below, I outline five data-driven trends that will shape our coming year.
1. “Data scientist” Is the New Community Manager
In 2011, data science job openings will see a rise in numbers similar to the gaggle of community management and social media marketing gigs that materialized out of the ether nearly three years ago. Data scientists are officially the hot new hire of choice even though their particular mix of formal skills is still rare.
Now, community managers will not become data scientists per se — true data science involves a heavy dose of machine learning, code skills, math chops and deep domain expertise.
But because demand for data knowledge and practicum will outpace supply for the foreseeable future, data science tutorials will be popular events, and lightweight data science skills will trickle down and meaningfully impact marketing roles everywhere.
Further, the very best data scientists and data-driven marketers will find themselves collaborating frequently, cross-pollinating best practices and earning a seat at most every table.
Some people have openly wondered whether the social media expert will go the way of the webmaster, as common social media skills spread horizontally across an organization.
Community managers and social media marketers, for their part, absolutely can make themselves more valuable and relevant despite commoditization by learning lightweight data science basics and forwarding clever, data-driven campaigns.
For all of us marketers, the newfound fame of data science should, regardless, be considered an opportunity, not a threat.
2. Data Management Will Become a Real Industry
Facebook’s highly publicized move to allow users to download their data in bulk is a stand-in for any kind of real change (with all due respect to Dave Recordon and others). It’s a gesture at best, far from any notion of true portability.
But, it’s still an indicator that we’re getting closer to our long-held vision of data that is accessible and transportable and managed by its rightful owner — you (whether “you” is an individual, a family, a group, or an organization).
Companies like Backupify speak to the same future. Backing up your data is just the first step, of course, a function that saves a seat for an entirely different function eventually.
When I am finally able to join my data from disparate services with a unified view and the right accompanying toolset, I’ll be able to do all kinds of derivation and detection. We’ll open up new fields and use cases ranging from personalized medicine to a new kind of data marketplace where I set my own price for those who want access to my history, preferences or predilections (something that Infochimps is already pioneering).
Jeremie Miller’s new vault-like open source project for collating, securing and sharing personal data is an especially promising new direction. More players will emerge in this space in the next year, and investors should look to place bets in the next six months, if they haven’t already.
Similarly, data availability and portability, done well, can bolster a brand and command new audiences. Helping this vision along is an investment of another kind.
Who will be the eTrade or the Google Health of my data? Will we have data advisors who look after our portfolio? Will we manage our data daily, weekly or monthly? Will it be exhilarating or more like cleaning out a closet?
Esther Dyson spoke to this idea back in 2008 in fact, remarking that “If you’d said 10 years ago that people are going to be managing data about themselves at a very granular level, people would have said ‘No, this is crazy.’”
Two years later, that vision is getting closer to reality, although only just.
3. The Floodgates Are Opening
Data has long been left abandoned in dark recesses and behind firewalls, either forgotten or hidden. The increasingly obvious value that can be gleaned from data is coaxing it back out into the open (thriving black markets not withstanding).
Bundle is one example of how major sources of data are starting to open. Born out of Citibank, Bundle has access to anonymized transaction records from more than 20 million people (compared to 3 million for Mint Data) that allows them to produce all kinds of useful magic for everyday people.
Bundle is, I think, exemplary, but there are plenty of other major corporations and data sources making their wares available in one form or another. I’d argue that the tide is shifting, dramatically. The question from large data producers is no longer “Why would I make my data available?” but rather, “How do I make my data available?” and “What do I need to know to do I do it right?”
In fact, the size of Factual’s recent $25 million venture round is as much a testament to its technical chops and high-fidelity data as it is a nod to the major brands it’s managed to get off the sidelines and into the game — something I admit I thought would take much, much longer.
80legs’ Shion Deysarkar on the other hand would argue that acquiring data via crawling and scraping (bottom up, instead of top down) is far more effective than waiting for someone to, at long last, provide it in bulk or via an API. The tension between data that is sold or bestowed and data that is found or acquired is, for now, a productive dynamic.
4. Big Data Will Become a Regulated Industry
This one is definitely happening — you can just feel it. You don’t spend this kind of money (ahem, Google) lobbying unless you’re worried about the cards falling the wrong way (Facebook, naturally).
I think that Better Advertising is actually a good idea because it will, at a minimum, take the online privacy conversation to everyday web users. But there’s no doubt that its critics are barking up the right tree — namely, that the group’s motives are potentially flawed (read: the advertising industry is regulating itself on its own terms in order to avoid being regulated by the government, under other auspices).
Several high profile screw-ups have led, for better or worse, to some vendetta-like muckraking and many millions of pageviews, not to mention an increasing fear of privacy erosion.
Whether that fear (and fear-mongering) is justified is grounds for another post, as is whether regulation is itself a good or bad idea.
But in 2011, the government will step in and start regulating the acquisition, use and distribution of data by Internet companies, starting with the low-hanging fruit, but quickly moving on to less obvious candidates.
Either Facebook or Google will be first, of course.
Facebook is a target because of its cultural prominence post-Sorkin, a widely perceived disregard for privacy, both in its features and policy and a certain inelegance that is a byproduct of its engineer-driven culture.
Google will be on the hook because of its insatiable hunger for more data — ITA being the latest target. That is, if you don’t count Groupon, which called off the proposed GOOG deal over purported regulatory fears and associated kill fee negotiations.
5. You’ll Be Sick of Hearing About Data (If You’re Not Already)
I have spoken to no fewer than three journalists in the past week who have complained of a recent deluge of data-related pitches full of jargon their senders don’t fully grasp. And those journalists are also getting savvier about examining the reality and assumptions behind those sexy infographics and the methodology of data capture in those pageview-grabbing studies.
Data is cool, people. Data is having its moment in the sun.
Data is also increasingly available (see number three, above). Growing numbers of us know how to play with data and bend it to our will. And as a result, 2011 will bring with it both good and bad effects of data’s newfound popularity.
Expect to see more data meetups and data conferences, more data-driven jobs and data-driven purchasing decisions. Expect more bloviating too, and a healthy dose of “the data told me to do it” excuse making.
We’ll see open data disrupt industries and verticals ranging from air travel to journalism to religion. We’ll see new kinds of museum displays, classrooms and advertisements, all moved and shaped by data. We’ll also see more data on lockdown, secreted away because of the competitive advantage it affords, and more lies and obfuscation.
Mark Zuckerberg said at the recent Web 2.0 Summit that “everything that can be social, will.” Much the same can be said of data — anything that can be data-driven will be.
But we’re likely heading for a data hangover, too. They might not even let me write this post again next year.
Summary
In the midst of all the data-driven innovation we are seeing, this will be also the year of separating the non-trivial from the trivial.
It’s one thing to acquire terabytes of data, and it’s quite another to cleanse, disambiguate and mobilize that data in service of real-time insights into markets young and old.
The intellectual and experiential barrier to entry in social media, I think it’s fair to argue, is relatively low. It’s therefore harder to distinguish oneself, but certainly easy to get started. That’s been the beauty of the experiment all along.
Until now, data science and data marketing have been relegated to the realm of a self-selecting and highly motivated few, but as new tools democratize access, we’ll start to see a different dynamic.
But with great power comes… well, the Mark Twain quote I used last time still applies: “There are three kinds of lies — lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Data can create new insights and open new opportunities, but it can also be twisted to serve an agenda or simply tell us what we want to hear.
It’s all in there, though — there in the data somewhere, if you know what you’re doing and how to do it well. Data knows everything we know, everything we don’t know, and, as it turns out, even a few things we don’t know we don’t know.
Disclosure: 80legs, Infochimps and Bundle are clients of Jones-Dilworth, Inc.
More Data Resources from Mashable:
- Facebook vs. Google and the Battle for Identity on the Web [OP-ED]
- How a Physically Aware Internet Will Change the World
- What You Need To Know About Data Portability
- How Online Retailers Can Leverage Facebook’s Open Graph
- How Real-Time Data is Changing Business Optimization
Images courtesy of iStockphoto, rev606, Flickr, The Planet, Jon McGovern.
Reviews: Backupify, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Internet, iStockphoto
More About: data, data portability, facebook, Google, List, Lists, predictions-2011, privacy, social media
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