A billion hours ago, modern Homo sapiens emerged.
A billion minutes ago, Christianity began.
A billion seconds ago, the IBM PC was released.
A billion Google searches ago … was this morning.
Courtesy of
Hal Varian, chief economist of Google. “Beyond Big Data,”
- 2000-plus: Estimated number of times the online activity of an average internet user is tracked every day
- 868: Number of websites among the 2510 most popular in the US where Twitter can track the activity of visitors
- 1205: Number of websites among the most 2510 most popular in the US where Facebook can track the activity of visitors
- $27.61: Estimated annual value to Facebook of a very active US female user’s data ($22.09 for a male)
- 700 million: Approximate number of adult consumers in the global database of Acxiom corp., a leading data broker
- 3000-plus: Number of shopping tendencies Acxiom says it can measure for nearly every US household
Sources: Acxiom Corp; AVG PrivacyFix; Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2014, R1, “Big Data”