Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

The Digital Universe set for its own Big Bang

Greetings from EMC World. Things are in full swing here in Orlando, FLA... An amazing show last night from the Gin Blossoms, our bloggers lounge is full of activity and Joe is about to take the stage to formally kick off the week.

No doubt you'll be seeing plenty of activity coming out of EMC World this week, but I couldn't resist mentioning this IDC white paper on the Digital Universe. It's an update to a similar piece from last year, but the numbers this go are all the more staggering.

Some highlights :

• 487 billion gigabytes of information were added to the Digital Universe in 2008.
• In 2012, there will be five times as many bits created or captured and added to the Digital Universe as in 2008.
• For all the information we create as individuals - taking pictures, updating our Facebook profile, sending emails, watching HDTV programs - an amount greater than that is created or captured about us in the Digital Universe.

I found the paper numbing. It talks about the impact of the economic crisis on the growth of the Digital Universe. Turns out - there hasn't been one. By that, even more information was generated in 2008 than predicted (by a factor of 3%).

While the Digital Universe is expected to grow by a factor of almost 5 during the next four years, IT budgets are only expected to grow by a factor of 1.2. (Note - warning flag should go up here...)

So, we're generating tons of information - and ease of producing and publishing information becomes easier each and every day.

The need for security and information management techniques will be key to organizing, managing and CONSUMING all of this information in the days to come, and the demand put on IT organizations will be enormous.

It's a provocative and well written piece... Definitely take some time to give it a read. And don't forget, you can monitor your own contributions to the Digital Universe with this nifty Digital Footprint Calculator.

That's all for now. Standby as we'll be doing our part to contribute to the growth of the Digital Universe from down here at EMC World.

The Wave 3 Report - Social Media Trends

I came across a rather interesting report from Universal McCann. The Wave 3 report is the third in a series that dives deep into measurement for trending, usage, sentiment and geo adoption of Social Media. If you're evangelizing Social Media in the enterprise - and making a case for investment - you may want to leverage the data in this report.

Some interesting notes -

- The vast majority of users surveyed are now producing content
- Asian markets are leading the way - creating more content than any other geo
- China has the largest blogging community - with over 42M bloggers
- Video is the big up and comer - up from 31% penetration in 2006 to 83% in 2008
- Bloggers are increasingly posting thoughts on products and brands

Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3

view presentation (tags: socialmedia research social media)