[programnature]

This is the kind of thing they need to get into. Data that lots of people care about, data for the masses, rather than obscure details on bolt sizes or ancient currencies. "Compute things people want".

I could only imagine what they could do with celebrity gossip. Or product comparisons.

[spitfire]

I am genuinely surprised we have not seen any "big data" articles about celebrity gossip rags. That has to be a market you could data-mine the crap out of for fun and profit.

I can imagine split testing Tom Cruise vs George Clooney to see who generates more revenue.

You could call it quantitative gossip.

[chime]

I'm pretty sure media companies do that already. They just won't publish it because of competition and PR reasons.

[karono]

Media companies are actually doing this already, for example to recommend the fitting celebrity for an advertisement ;-)

Just take a look at http://www.celebrityperformance.com/

[samstave]

I would be surprised if FB does NOT have an analytics portal similar to this it allows NSA types to access.

[Raphael]

Why would they spend time on an interface for the government?

[rdl]

Not necessarily built in-house. Or, charged for at sufficiently high rates, or used as an internal research tool ("how are people using our product?").

Also, Palantir.

[samstave]

Yeah - I always forget about Palantir!

I'm imagining they must be like the Spanish inquisition of tech companies.