Big data predictions for 2012

Over the last several years, the desire to understand the surging rivers of digital data forming all around us has led inexorably towards something more meaningful than simple analysis. The rise of consumer analytics, and by that I mean analytics tools that literally anybody could and would use, could be arguably said to have begun with the introduction of Web analytics. After all, practically everyone — and every business, large or small — now has a Web presence.

The push to understand the traffic and interaction of this ever-more-important touchpoint with the world has grown steady over the last two decades. The old business intelligence solutions of yore tended towards the sensibility of serious-minded scientific and professional tools, with the complexity and learning curve to match. In stark contrast, the current crop of populist analytics tools (examples: Google Analytics and more recently mobile-friendly services such as Clicky or analytics aggregators like Trakkboard) make it drop-dead easy to see the underlying numbers.

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