Is this plain creepy stalking or a big opportunity that’s still untapped? You decide.

Big Data is everywhere, Big Data is useful, Big Data is awesome. Yeah, yeah we hear you.
Watch this video, and you might just change your mind.

The video caters to any service provider who could potentially use Big Data to assess the effectiveness of his marketing campaign. For example, a cafè has just released a promotion of some sort, or opened a new store at a particular location. Or done both of them together and wants to find out if it has really worked or not.

In comes in the wonderful communications provider who provides all sorts of data to the cafè’s marketing department so that the cafè can examine the effectiveness of their campaign.

Data like – which route does John, your customer, who uses my communications service to tweet about your cafè takes to work? Does he stop by your cafè on the way or is it close to somewhere like a cinema that he had visited? And how many likes, reposts or other social platforms has he used to communicate this?

Wow, I think I’d be quite worried if a random cafè I was a patron of had this much information about me. The communications provider gives the cafè data about the route I take to their cafè? Is that sort of detail necessary? Personally, that comes as close to privacy invasion as anything can.

Then again, we are probably being too skeptical about this too quickly. Perhaps we need to be aware but not worried.
I’d like to quote a fellow, random internet user to conclude:
“I am an optimist, a humanist, and a futurist so I welcome our new digital age and all the good it can do for society. Technology is not the problem. The problem is how we use it.”