US media: Behind Weibo "Big Data" contains "great wealth"

According to the Xinhua news agency, microblogging and other Internet social platforms have become a lyrical tool for many people to promote the Internet "big Data", behind the "big wealth", worth as much as oil.

At the very least, Wall Street's wealth-making gurus are using the data to take a step ahead of the market.

But this raises new concerns, including the invasion of public privacy and the emergence of new tools for "evil".

Happy Mourning and making money

One of the daily jobs of Paul Hotting, the chief executive of the Wall Street "winter capital markets", is to use computer programs to analyze 340 million of global Weibo account messages, and then to judge the mood of people by 1 to 50.

Hotting based on the results of the analysis to determine how to deal with the hands of millions of dollars in stocks. The principle is simple: if everyone seems happy, buy, if everyone's anxiety rises, sell. The recruitment effect was significant, with Hotting's company earning 7% per cent in the first quarter of this year.

Wall Street is not the only Hotting digging up Internet data wealth. Hedge funds analyze the sales of their products based on customer reviews of their shopping websites, and the banks infer employment rates according to the number of job site posts, and investment agencies collect and analyze listed companies ' statements looking for bankruptcy clues.

Nor is it the only Wall Street that sees this wealth.

U.S. President Barack Obama's campaign is a real-time analysis of voters ' preferences for presidential candidates, based on Weibo messages from key state voters. Google and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies, based on Internet search content to analyze the global influenza and other disease spread. United Nations agencies are judging the trend of inflation based on the marketing ads posted on the Internet by Latin American supermarkets.

Data and wealth

The wealth of Internet data has long been no secret, and the recent rise of social networking platforms such as Weibo has doubled the wealth. IBM estimates that these platforms generate approximately 2.5 megabytes of data per day.

This is considered "big data" by some researchers and is of great value. 9374.html "The > World Economic Forum released its report last year, identifying the data as a new asset, worth as oil." The report said that "the business map has been redrawn" and that companies familiar with how to use the data will become the strongest.

The human brain is unable to "thoroughly understand" the data, and computer programs can analyze and summarize the topics, consumer trends, what languages are most commonly used, what campaigns are most popular, and even the spread of epidemics.

The value of these data lies in the statute of limitations. "This is changing the world dramatically," says Gari Kim, a sociology professor at Harvard University. "Let's find social change and make decisions in an unprecedented way." ”

For Wall Street, which is a moment of winning, the prescription is crucial. Investors can monitor Weibo before the official news is released, news of al-Qaida leader's death or the situation in the Middle East, and the use of existing information to speculate on car sales or real estate prices before official figures are released.

Adam Hornol, a senior advisor to the Boston Market consultancy, reckons that 5 years ago, 2% of Wall Street companies were collecting "unofficial" information on platforms such as microblogs, and nearly half of those companies now have such a tool. He told the New York Times Reporter: "Big data" fundamentally changes the way we trade. ”

Privacy and conspiracy

New worries are born. Some private institutions are concerned that the use of these data by enterprises and institutions may violate the original intention of the bob, and constitute privacy infringement. The construction of the legal framework is far from catching up with new technologies, and countries have different definitions of individual privacy.

While messages such as tweets are collected in summary form, some information may still be tracked to individuals. Internet Alliance founder Berners recently expressed concern about the misuse of Internet personal information by companies, warning people to "speak" on the internet cautiously.

Some American private institutions have sued a U.S. government program to monitor national security risks through social networking information, which may involve discrimination against certain groups of people.

Another potential risk is that some people may use platforms such as microblogs to publish false information and create an illusion of what the business is doing in order to raise or depress the company's share price.

Wagris Cistis, associate professor of computer science at the University of California, and colleagues devised a computer model that speculated on the stock market's movements based on Weibo information, which proved that the model was more effective than other models.

Just, Cistis warns: "The model of predicting the stock market only works if nobody knows it." ”

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)