via Reuters by Paul Smalera
The data pieces are valuable, but not solely because they help advertisers sell more widgets: In an email, Gnip Chief Operating Officer Chris Moody explained one of the coolest uses of data his company has enabled may have actually helped firefighters do their job better: “During the 4 Mile Canyon Fire in Boulder in 2010, [Gnip customer] VisionLink was able to provide fire crews and managers a realtime view into what was happening on the ground by layering geo-tagged Tweets and Flickr images onto a Google map of the area.”
So, yes, to adapt an old Internet meme, All your Tumblr (and much of your other social history) are belong to Big Data. But that’s not necessarily bad, if all the power of social media belongs to all of us. Whether that’s a worthwhile trade-off all depends on how we use that power, and what we finally do with all that data.