Datafying, is that a word? Is this guy making up buzzwords just for fun? Well, sometimes yes. But not in this case.
I am currently reading a book by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier called Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. This book describes how big data will become the basics for everyday life.
Datafying is one of the terms they coined and introduce in the book. While I’m not a big fan of the terminology, this term is actually a pretty good construct to grasp what big data and the internet of things are changing about the world:
“To datafy a phenomenon, is to put it in a quantified format so it can be tabulated and analyzed.”So Twitter, as it’s data firehose is being used for sentiment analyses, is the datafication
![vintage-bingo-card](http://blog.vint.sogeti.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/04/vintage-bingo-card-217x300.jpg)
Bitcoin however has several characteristics which make it an ideal market for social data prediction:So yes, if the demographic and context (use, types of content, information flows) of a medium is similar to the userbase of a product, of course it makes sense to use this data to make predictions on how the product, Bitcoin in this case, will ‘act’. Bitcoin is just a string of data, and each bitcoin has a unique code element to set it apart from all the other bitcoins. So in terms of datafying, bitcoin already is the datafication of money in a way. But what can we say about the value of Bitcoin in the future using Twitter? Here are 100.000+ tweets on bitcoin, be sure to let me know what you’d find, than I can make a data driven investment and maybe start stacking up bitcoins. Image credits: Wired, TheUpStart
- The value of Bitcoins is determined almost solely on market demand, because the number of coins on the market is predictable and are not tied to any physical goods
- Bitcoin traders tend to be in the same demographic as social media users, and so their attitudes, opinions and sentiment towards Bitcoin are well documented
- Bitcoin is predominately traded by individuals rather than large institutions
- Events that affect Bitcoin value are disseminated first and foremost on social media