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January 23, 2014

Explosive Growth in Mobile Device Market Fuels New Marketing Trend: Reality Mining

Not so long ago, data mining was all the rage when it came to marketing. Then big data projects followed along, and offered a wealth of potential opportunities in taking what we knew about people and applying it. But now, the growth of the mobile device sector is driving a whole new trend in online marketing, and beyond. It's called “reality mining,” and though it's still just getting started in a lot of ways, it's posing some big new opportunities for businesses, according to a new report from Global Industry Analysts (GIA).

The GIA report, titled simply “Reality Mining”, took a closer look at the concept of reality mining, with a particular emphasis on what it is and how it's performed, along with a look at issues associated with the practice.  The practice of reality mining involves taking mobile devices—smartphones and tablets, mainly, but other kinds as well—and analyzing the data. Things like GPS data, call logs, Internet histories and even e-mail records all contribute to form a picture about the user; likes, dislikes, favorite places, places avoided, traffic patterns and more all become available.

All of this data, in turn, can be used by an assortment of platforms, including clear favorites like customer relationship management (CRM) tools, resource planning mechanisms, security and technology functions, and more. Traffic management becomes quite a bit easier when it can be more readily predicted where and when traffic snarls occur due to heavier than average use of the roads, and there are many other examples of how a little advance knowledge of trends can prove to be both useful and even potentially profitable. Using such data in security purposes may even be the greatest advance, with the ability to potentially prevent crimes before same can happen.

But by like token, reality mining in some senses is almost as dangerous as the real thing. Without proper security, there's a risk that all that data may slip into the wrong hands, and with all that data, there's the potential to really ruin lives. The security advancements that may prevent a terrorist bombing or a mass murder may go awry, and innocent people may be imprisoned or worse because of a misapplication of collected data. The concept of privacy is nearly completely lost here, as some central body would be able to know virtually every connection a user establishes in the course of a day.

It's easy to see why reality mining has such incredible potential. Businesses could learn almost exactly what users want to see in products and services and offer these things accordingly to the point where most every product release would be a profitable rave. It's really one of the most impressive marketing concepts seen in some time, and coupled with a big data-style process, reality mining could well mean a future where product development is seamless and perfectly suited to the user's tastes. The systems necessary to make sense of all that data could yield powerful new impact. But there are so many dangers associated with this that it's almost useless. It is, essentially, too powerful a system to use without the most careful controls. It's the marketing equivalent of a nuclear fission plant; powerful enough to run cities, but if something goes wrong, it goes catastrophically wrong. Powerful but dangerous, reality mining has the potential to make big changes, for good and for ill.




Edited by Alisen Downey


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