Fashionable Big Data: The “it” Trend

I’m really into fashion, love following blogs, using Instagram and Tumblr to know the new trends and get inspired by new ideas.  After reading a case study about Burberry, for my marketing class, and discovering that this 157 year old brand has evolved and adapted to keep up with most of the new technology without loosing its essence (please refer to artofthetrench.com and see what I mean), I started to wonder about the connection between Big Data and Fashion and how the fashion industry could be related with the new “It” trend of technology?

As we already know, Big Data (BD) can help us gain insights to improve already existing products and services or to create new ones.  Lately this hasn’t been a mystery to fashion designers and trendy retail stores, that’s why these two are using information to understand what the customer wants and additionally get a financial benefit out of it by optimizing production and by minimizing the leftovers of garments. How? By hiring companies such as Bodymetrics, that collects data about body measurements and sizes and gives this statistics to the designer and retailer to better predict the demand of their products according to how many items of a certain size are sold.

Another way in which BD is improving the fashion business is trough social media, in this case the information gathered from Facebook, Pinterest, Polyvore, Instagram, and other social websites can help to figure out consumer sentiments towards a certain brand or product, which is essential feedback for retailers and designers and avoids them from relying exclusively on post-experience or intuition. 

Now that we have a clearer perspective about how the fashion industry and Big Data are linked, we can confirm that this is a match made in heaven. And can ones more ratify that BD is improving everything around it, so tell me what’s not to LOVE about BIG DATA?

Big Data Stats!!!!!!!!

Guess what?! Big data "knows" who you will vote for in next elections!

Do politicians build strong platforms or do they just follow Big Data to win in the elections?

Elections: The process that involves thousands of people and takes massive character every few years across all elected governments on earth. Elections are the time when huge campaigns run at each distinct part of the countries and when consultants prepare massive polls and analyze loads of information to identify and target millions of voters.

The US Politicians learned fast to adopt Big Data and now they apply it to the attitudes and preferences of the population to “understand why people are voting for them or why they’re not, and that has the effect of hopefully being able to change policy in a more meaningful and democratic way”. The 2012 US elections displayed how Big Data could be used for turning gigantic campaign data into detailed practical information. Data analyst Nate Silver became a celebrity when he managed to predict the results in each of the 50 states accurately.

Few contraindications for the application of Big Data in elections exist though. In the 1948 elections, the polls (Big Data back then) predicted a Thomas Dewey victory over Harry Truman. That election marked the first time pollsters relied on telephone surveys, giving them access to more voters. It turned out that a lot of Truman supporters didn't have phones. The real results turned out to be otherwise. Or bringing parallels to nowadays, when huge campaigns and platforms are built to count the polls of voters on Facebook and other social platforms we must consider that “the elderly woman in Philadelphia, who doesn't have a photo ID, also probably doesn't tweet much or otherwise contribute to the 15 terabytes of new information on Facebook every day”. This example shows that Big Data can be very helpful in our everyday life and that no one can escape from it, but analysts need to keep their critical mind to not blindly fall into the data gap.

BIG DATA - How is it changing the world around us?

What is Big Data?

Everything we do, using Facebook, watching movies on YouTube or Netflix, Chatting on Skype, Talking on Mobile, shopping online or off-line or eating at restaurant generates data at an unbelievable rate. A multitude of sensors, cameras, smartphones, laptops tablets are fueling

 this unprecedented rate of data generation. This rate of data being generated every minute has been previously unseen. These data flows can be of thousands of gigabytes, and because of the sheer size of such data, it is called the BIG DATA. In the digital world we are leaving a trail of data when we search, browse, buy, comment, like, share, blog, watch. This trail of data creates a digital foot print of each of us. A lot can be derived about us from this data trail – from the car we drive to whom we like to when we wake up in the morning.

Why is it Important?

This data has opened a window into our world. There is more and more information available about us.  Google has been collecting data on our search behavior. Google uses this data to provide relevant search results and advertisements. Similarly Facebook collects data on all the things we do (like, share or comment). It uses this data to assess the strength of the relationship with our Facebook friends. This then determines what updates appear on our page.  The size of the data provides unlimited ways in which this data can be used. However, we may feel a bit concerned about the personal privacy, but the utility of data is tremendous.

Government and companies can benefit by using this data in variety of ways to improve efficiency and productivity. For example let’s say there is lot of Twitter feed about a new product. A firm can analyze the data of these feeds and see what is the response, who is driving the response, who are the early adopters, who are excited or not so excited about this product, what kind of networks are being formed. Analyzing this data can provide useful insights and help developed new and effective solutions.

How it is being used?

Big data offers huge opportunities, for instance, in healthcare. Analyzing data about patient history, his lifestyle, health history of his or her family and close relatives can provide useful information about what health issues can arise in future. At a macro level it can be used to analyze health issues of large populations and government agencies can use big data to intervene and understand the issues better.

Another example is Netflix; it has been collecting big data on consumer movie viewing habits. It has used this big data to refine it movie recommendation algorithm. This algorithm can very accurately predict if we would like a movie or not based on our past viewing preferences.

It is clear and evident that big data is going to change our future and many more ways than we can think now. For starters we will use data from our Blog post (using Google analytics) to analyze & improve our blog.  Watch this space for more....