In this digital, data driven age, it’s almost impossible to get away from the need to manipulate data. Whether you’re a student carrying out research, a parent trying to create a budget or a professional trying to meet your KPI’s, it’s incredibly important that we effectively manage data. However, the examples of data given here are likely to be relatively small data sets. If you think about some of the huge corporations that have thousands of employees, it’s easy to imagine the amount of data that can be amassed in just a short period of time, and how essential it is to have software that can effectively manage and analyze it. Data.world sets out enable teams the ability to edit and share data in an attempt to make it more social. Founded by Brett Hurt, he found that vast amounts of data is left unused as it is not connected to tool chains, potentially resulting in reduced innovation.

Social

By focusing on bringing a social element to Big Data, Data.world enables a variety of people within an organization the ability to collaborate in projects. Whereas in previous years they may have failed to convince business owners that this will add value to their activities, it is now understood that collaboration in this way can greatly increase productivity and therefore provide a competitive advantage. To do this, Data.world launched an enterprise edition that allows everyone within an organization who’s interested in the data the ability to access it. The software connects with a wide variety of other software to successfully manipulate the data, such as Google Data Studio, Microsoft Excel, IBM SPSS, Microstrategy, Tableu, IFTTT and programming languages such as Python. The idea behind this is to let the user choose whichever platform they wish to conduct analysis and Data.world will take care of sharing it with others to provide the opportunity to collaborate.

How could it be used?

There are numerous applications for software like Data.world. For example, news websites thrive on being able to quickly identify what content performs well in order to recognize what their readers want to see more of. The data enables the marketing department to create relevant content calendars that are then passed down to the journalists and authors to create the content that will keep the audience coming back repeatedly, therefore increasing readership. Netflix does this by analyzing the watch times of all of their series to analyze certain demographics tastes and preferences. With a service like Data.world, they’d be able to do this efficiently and share it with anyone within the organization at a lightning speed. Investors can clearly see the potential too, as the business has managed to raise $33 million in funding across two investment rounds.

Who’s behind it?

What’s also interesting is that the founders have ties with the Obama administration, namely the former Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil. Patil is on Data.world’s board of advisers and is supportive of how vocal Data.world is about creating a set of values and principles on how we should manage Big Data in the way of a data manifesto. This is a clear sign that the company is very self-conscious with integrity, which is seen by some as the first steps towards corporate responsibility within the data industry. Storing and using data is often in the press for all the wrong reasons, such as it being used to manipulate buying habits via cookies, but there are so many positive and productive uses for huge data sets that we’re still only starting to begin to understand the potential.

What’s next?

It’s not often that you hear about a company like Data.world that is at the forefront of software innovation, but under the hood there’s socially responsible core team that are working to create something really special that completely separates them from everything else on the market. If they can continue to convince users that their platform provides value to their activities whilst earning their trust by communicating principles and values that resonate with their audience, then there’s no reason why they can’t continue growing at exceptional rates.