1 post tagged “presence”

Sorry, I realize the above title sounds like a graduate dissertation topic. What it means is that I think it would be cool if someone were able to figure out a way to access and leverage certain behind-the-scenes data streams like credit card transactions in a given geographic area, or cell tower activity levels, as a way to gauge the social popularity of a given merchant, venue, or local area. For example, if you knew that there was an abnormally high number of credit card charges on a Friday night at your local pub, you might assume that there was either a party, concert, or special sports event going on there. You might also conclude that there was a football game going on at Soldier Field if you saw a large spike in cell phone traffic on a particular Sunday in January.

Are there any companies working on gaining access to these kinds of data sets? If so has anyone been able to make any sense from them and perhaps make them available to other researchers or to the general public? Would there be a way to aggregate this data usefully without compromising security and privacy at the individual level?