Yeah so you know that I like telescopes, talking smack on Twitter, and watching Let's Plays of Dwarf Fortress. Now, how do you monetize that? What meaningful marketing information does that give you? You see where I'm going with my skepticism? I'm skeptical that the data itself is useful by any measure because in itself it does not give a marketer nor a business an insight that they couldn't infer by more low tech means (my age, income bracket, how often I buy things, etc all which is already in their records in the majority of cases). None of this "big data" stuff is really that novel and it's an attempt at modern alchemy of turning crap data into "valuable information." Knowing the minutia of your customers or users in general won't help you serve them nor will it help you get more of them. At some point the supposed tacit information of the market devolves into the random noise of the universe.