As access to big data grows, so does the marketplace for startup
big data companies. One of the leading trends in enterprise is the development
of big data startup companies. In a article published last year on datasciencecentral.com,
Richard Snee explored five of the up and coming big data startup companies.
When looking through the article, a trend that emerged was the key aspect of
visualization. One of the five startups, Visual.ly, focuses on providing
meaningful information from the data entered by delivering powerful
visualizations. Part of their key objective is to remain true to their core
values. Visual.ly promises that:
- Data will be accurate and verifiable - Visual.ly will not "lie with statistics."
- Proper Sourcing & Attribution - Visual.ly will always give credit where due and will do its own reporting.
- Best Practices in Visual Representation - Visual.ly will not exploit idiosyncrasies of the human visual system to exaggerate or misrepresent data. (Source 1)
By adhering to their core ethical principles, Visual.ly has
emerged as a way to promote a brand via social medial. They target agencies,
brands, and organizations in an effort to promote and provide credibility to
entities through the use of data. By harnessing the power of big data, startup
companies such as Visual.ly are able to capitalize on the growing access to big
data.
Sources:
1. http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/5-big-data-startups-that-matter-platfora-datastax-visual-ly-domo-
2. http://visual.ly/
I just posted about a different big data startup company that is focusing on a different aspect, business customers (http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2013/04/15/a-billion-prices-and-counting-big-data-ambition-at-startup-indix/). The company, Indix, is collecting data on products, their prices, and events that could possibly affect the prices. They are looking for possibly connections to give to business managers in order to improve the supply chain aspect of the business.
ReplyDeleteWhat was interesting was that it didn't really mention anything about visualization. It makes sense to me that, like you said, visualization would be one of the most important aspects of a big data startup. This seems accurate because the visualization of the data seems to be the best way to "sell" your ideas to people who have no idea how to analyze or even handle big data. It's kind of like the same concept that we talked about in Simulation modeling. The stakeholders usually don't know anything about simulation so if you tell them all about confidence intervals and SMORE plots, they have no idea. However, if you show them a graph that's easy to read, it makes sense.
I guess I'm wondering if it actually is necessary or just helpful. It seems that without adequate visualization it would be difficult to really convince other people that what you are doing makes sense but maybe it's possible...