[2] Several independent researchers have used social data to "nowcast" and forecast trends such as unemployment, flu outbreaks,[3] mood of whole populations,[4] travel spending and political opinions in a way that is faster, more accurate and cheaper than standard government reports or Gallup polls.
Cost and overhead previously rendered this semi-public form of communication unfeasible, but advances in social networking technology from 2004–2010 has made broader concepts of sharing possible.
The social data revolution enables not only new business models like the ones on Amazon.com but also provides large opportunities to improve decision-making for public policy and international development.
[10] This ties together all societal actors: Public institutions, private firms, as well as individuals, each relying on data in a unique way.
[12] In its beginnings, this data entailed written information for record keeping and control, including a census system.
[12][10] In the public sphere, connecting the survey and poll methodologies with database computing, resulted in the ability to gather and store large data sets on individuals.
[10] Over the last few decades, the internet has shifted from being used mostly as a source of information about the world to being primarily used for communication, user-generated content, data sharing, and community building.
[18] Social networking sites, for example, can sell user data to advertisers and other entities which they can then influence consumer decisions.
[19][20] This growth of people's digital identity – the information available via these electronic sources- is being used by companies and organizations to improve products and services and to reduce costs by targeting what consumers want/expect.
[26] With the use of Twitter and geotags, medical researchers can evaluate the health of a particular neighborhood and use that information to provide better outreach and services.
[26] Medtronic has developed a digital blood glucose meter that allows health care providers and patients know about low levels.
[29] With the vast amount of social data available today, researchers can now analyze a wider group and can obtain a broader view of information.
They can use social networks, cell phone data, and perform online experiments that allow them to gather more information than before.
[19] "From a macro-perspective, it is expected that Big Data-informed decision-making will have a similar positive effect on efficiency and productivity as ICT have had during the recent decade.
[7] Individual interactions with the internet, such as words in comments, social media postings, and Google search term volumes, offer an increasingly large source of big data.
[31] "Google has analyzed clusters of search terms by region in the United States to predict flu outbreaks faster than was possible using hospital admission records.
[7] Data can be generated from user-behavior in multiplayer online games,[7] such as League of Legends, World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Call of Duty, and Dota 2.
Nathan Eagle's, a computer scientist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, began using cellphones in the early 2000s to collect accurate, large-scale data about real social interactions.