Pulse: The New Science of Harnessing Internet Buzz to Track Threats and Opportunities

by Douglas W. Hubbard

The ultimate guide to mining the Internet for real-time assessment of trends and data Showing how the Internet can be an incredible tool for businesses and others to measure trends in real time, Pulse describes tools for inexpensive and real time measurement methodologies businesses can start using right away. This timely book also puts this emerging science in perspective and explains how this new measurement instrument will profoundly change decision making in business and government. Pulse reveals how the Internet is evolving into a tool for measuring and forecasting trends in society, the economy, public opinion and even public health and security. It is an absolutely essential book for every business leader to turn a powerful, underutilized tool to its complete potential.

Genres: Business

208 pages, Hardcover

First published March 25, 2011

Reviews

[db · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for people who want to learn about internet data and how it could be used. But if you already know about scenario modeling, correlation and types of internet data, then it may be of limited use. A good reminder in book states, most data doesn’t get used real time because people just collect data without a plan for real time action. This is an old problem in business as with SPC and it is just the same with internet data - use the data - sooner than later.

[Andrew Morris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book inevitably has it points of being a bit outdated; the specifics of available APIs are bound to change. But for all of that, this book is mostly completely relevant. The authorial voice is also solid - it takes a basic business approach for the most part, but goes into a little depth into statistical tools for those who have an interest. I would have preferred a slightly wider range of examples, but that was partly a result of being published in 2011.

[Omer Zeybek · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice introduction to internet buzz conpect...

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good overview of the use of the enormous amount of data that has been collected on internet and social media. It is a little dated even though it came out in May of 2011. Some of the material will be familiar to many people who would have interest in this book. If nothing else, it may stimulate thinking about how to find and use data that is being created from social media to understand the world we live in. On Friday, November 4, Columbia's GSAPP had a very good one day conference called 'What is BitCity?,' that focused on the harnessing the use of data and social networks to make urban environments more livable. Along the lines of Hubbard's book, Sara Williams, the Co-Director of ASAPP has a wonderful exhibit at Avery (Columbia University) that maps crowd-sourced check-ins in New York City. Her exhibit also shows the difficulty of using this private and public data to ask questions about our social environment.

http://www.arch.columbia.edu/event/gs...

[Jari Pirhonen]

Internet, social media, mobile phones, etc. are giving us a huge amount of public data which can be used to track big-picture trends to help with more accurate and faster decision making. The author coined the term "Pulse" to represent this new macro-trend tracking possibility, which he defines as "the collective, macroscopic trends which can be scientifically inferred by harnessing publicly accessible data from the Internet."

Because of Social Data Revolution, there're public data available: what we surf, whom we friend, what we say, where we go, what we buy and how we play. This is actual data, not based on surveys, where people are known to "sugarcoat" the answers. There are already studies showing, that using data from Internet, we can predict accurately and near real-time flu outbreaks, unemployment, success of the movies, etc.

The author predicts, that the Pulse is not only allowing faster and more accurate decisions, but also will change the basic models of society.

[Brandon Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wasn't sure whether to give this 3 or 4 stars, but I liked some of the ideas in the book and it really made me raise my eyebrows.