The Five V’s Of Big Data
Big data can be found all around us, we are the number one producer of data. Our data can be used to benefit us greatly and save you lots of money. This data can be used in apps such as Honey (See Figure 1) which is a browser extension that helps users get coupon codes for the best deals as well as helping users find the best deals on websites for free. This leaves many users questioning how can such a thing be free and how would they be able to make money from giving us good deals on products?
The most important V of big data is Variety because it gives you a broad view of data that you have rather than Volume which is just a large amount of data that is not as good as Variety is when finding the best competitive price. If you have a large Volume of data on users purchasing a certain product it is not nearly as useful as the Variety of data from multiple users buying similar products that are all different prices which allows Honey to offer you the most competitive deal on the type of product that you are searching for as well as using promo codes that have been used on the site before to try and save you a little more money at the checkout.
Another comparison to Variety that can be made is Velocity which would refer to the speed at which the data comes in at. Two more V’s that are used in big data are Volume and Veracity. Volume is the amount of data that you have, and Veracity is how accurate the data is. The reason that this is not as important for Honey as Variety is that for Honey to give the best prices for the user it must use websites such as Amazon which can only work if they have a steady flow of users coming in and buying their products which takes the need for data to come fast into the website’s hands rather than Honey. When finding the most competitive price and best discount codes if the collection method includes a popular website Velocity should not be a problem due to it being more of the website's issue if there is no velocity in your data collection. You might be wondering how can Honey have Velocity if the number of users drops. Honey has this problem covered by partnering with many popular figures such as popular YouTubers and celebrities to promote them to keep a steady data flow coming into the app. Another way Honey can keep Velocity with its data collection is because of its recent buyout from PayPal, they now have access to receipts and how much people pay for items across websites.
One example of Variety being used to help a company profit is Honey. The way Honey works on the surface is by taking the most popular purchases of a product on a website such as Amazon and comparing the number of purchases with the price to see what will be the best deal, the way the user will know is when viewing a product on Amazon the Honey app will pop up asking if you would like to compare to another store to see a more competitive price allowing the user to be able to save large amounts of money when purchasing new items. Another feature that Honey offers is coupon codes at the checkout, this is the most controversial part of the Honey app as many people asked how the app can make money while being free and offering coupon codes, a popular theory is that Honey has deals with companies to promote their product as the cheapest but what really happens is much more interesting. The way that Honey can be a profitable company is they use the majority data of buyers in locations and sell the habits to companies so they know who they can advertise to and get calls back about their product. You can see in Figure 3, that when this user goes to the eBay website it is stored in the web extensions code. Companies use the Variety of data of consumers in their area to make sales calls that will gain them profit rather than waste time. Strangely Google also has a very similar process that works the opposite way to give you personalized ads. Companies will pay google to be advertised to people looking into their type of product rather than companies paying Honey to give them data on possible consumers of their product.
Big data can be very useful to companies around the world helping them make a profit off of your data while helping you make the best decision when buying items from Amazon. For many people this is a very controversial topic due to companies making a profit off of your personal data while you are saving money off of their data, leaving many people torn asking themselves wheatear it is worth it to download Honey for free and let their purchase data be accessed by corporations.
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