The Evolution of Data Products

Discovery is the key to building great data products, as opposed to products that are merely good.

These products are frequently built from data that’s discarded because nobody knows how to use it; sometimes it’s the “data exhaust” that we leave behind as our cell phones, cars, and other devices collect information on our activities.

we’re moving to a world where we interact with appliances that deliver the results of data, rather than the data itself.

Indeed, the most important operation in data science may be a “join” between different databases to answer questions that couldn’t be answered by either database alone.

The first generation of data products, such as CDDB, were essentially a single database. More recent products, such as LinkedIn’s Skills database, are composites:

These projects suggest the next step in the evolution toward data products that deliver results rather than data.