[ap22213]

I don't know, I'm starting to change my opinion of this. I used to think 'big data' meant anything that didn't fit easily into a RDBMS. At least petabytes.

But, more recently, in conversations with non-programmers, I see that 'big data' to them, means 'broad data' - it means trying to track everything possible and make sense of it. The average business user is really excited to be able to cross-relate disparate types of data - in an effort to make things better. 'Big data' enables the breaking down silos and enabling of cross references. It's about making empirical decisions based on data rather than opinion or intuition. That's really good, in my opinion.

So, 'big data' in that way is more amorphous than just the size of the data. With services and networks, the question becomes where does the data begin and end? Big data is potentially everything.

[eliben]

If you're right then it's a sad situation. I hate it when terms start morphing into unrelated interpretations by means of public drift.

[plorkyeran]

In this case at least the meaning it's drifting towards still actually means something rather than just a meaningless buzzword.

[Helianthus]

Just wait until Big Data is referred to similarly to Big Oil...

[Thrymr]

> I hate it when terms start morphing into unrelated interpretations by means of public drift.

That's how language has always worked. There are people who are still uptight by the current "misuse" of words like "awesome" and "hopeful", but those of us who grew up with different meanings in common usage mostly just shrug.

For technical terms, usually I can live with words having domain-specific meaning that differs from common usage, but "theory" is one I still can't get over. It causes too much miscommunication.