
The Really Smart Phone - Anon84
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704547604576263261679848814.html
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donofrip
The world is finally starting to take notice of how significant it is that
everyone has these handheld computers in their pockets all day long. The
amount of data that is being harnessed by apps today is impressive, but over
the next few years, I think the market for this information is going to be
enormous. I wonder who will "own" the information. I assume it will be the
network providers.

They are going to need tools to make sense of the information they have. They
have very detailed information on their phone users, but they'll have to think
through how they can monetize the information legally. Could we see these
companies developing the ability to say, "the user of the cell phone X, who is
a 14 year-old girl, spent 2 hours in this store on this day". That data on an
aggregate basis could be very valuable to companies--companies that would be
willing to pay for this kind of insight. "We noticed a spike in teenage girls
visiting your stores in the northeast within a day after launching your ad
campaign. It didn't have as large of a spike in this region of the country
however." I think investors would be willing to buy this kind of information
too. Imagine the edge a hedge fund would have if they had this sort of insight
into consumer trends.

I suspect there will be a huge need for tools to analyze and make sense of the
data that this new market will demand. I'm sure there are already some
startups headed down this path, and I'm sure large communication companies
would rather use a vendor for this data analysis than learn to do it
themselves.

I think this is definitely the edge of a huge new market.

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markkat
>I think this is definitely the edge of a huge new market.

I agree. I also feel that we are going to see uses of this information that we
haven't considered yet.

Urban planning seems a very low-hanging fruit. I'd bet you can predict crime
to some extent too.

As I read this, I kept thinking about Roller Coaster Tycoon. Watching all
those little people mill about.

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anmol
Funnily enough, I'm one of the people mentioned in this article, and we're a 3
person startup making this real.

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ratsbane
Can you post a link to your startup? I'd like to read more.

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6ren
You can see the appeal of <http://color.com> to VCs.

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tychonoff
This is amazing data, and I expect that much more research is coming our way.
It would be interesting to speculate on what kind of databases might be
needed.

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xijhing
Isaac Asimov's Foundation, anyone?

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Apocryphon
Despite my deep desire to see a big budget adaptation of World War Z, the
truly most relevant zombie fiction of today is Stephen King's Cell.

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boboblong
How would one get involved in this sort of programming/research? I basically
want to understand the world (of humans) as a whole, the really big picture,
and this kind of thing is right up my alley. I'm thinking I should learn R and
statistics, but what else? I already study history intensively.

