BuzzData - Initial Thoughts

I've been tracking BuzzData for a while (see posts on data engines). It is now open for business.

Firstly, what is BuzzData? Functionally, it supports the following features:

• creating identity: a user has a profile, etc. with all the normal social capabilities between objects in the BuzzData universe (following people, following data)
• uploading data: as per other data markets, BuzzData permits the uploading of data files
• associating objects with data: these can be visualizations (note that it doesn't provide its own visualization technology) or articles (discovered online, relating to the data set in question)
• searching for data sets: the usual keyword interaction

This set of functionality supports an ecosystem intended to snowball value on to data sets. Users follow datasets, users currate the data (e.g. I find a visualization of a data set and share it). I can comment on data sets, etc. Like any ecological system, one has to figure one of two strategies. You either have to provide value to individual users independent of the design ecosystem (this was exactly the clever part of delicious. It was useful to the user for bookmarking even without all the social effects of discovery and sharing) or you have to ensure there is not a cold start issue (in the case of BuzzData, this would mean that the site was already rich with data sets).

Independent of what the use-cases, persona or other design intentions of the site are, I'm not sure that BuzzData has yet solved the initial conditions in either of the two ways described above. It doesn't have the data coverage of other sites like timetric, ZanRan or d8taplex, yet it doesn't provide data tools such as visualization or statistical analytics or manipulation. However, perhaps this points to the intended value proposition of the site - bringing social to data. It is the user base that provides both of these (or will if things turn out right). That being the case, the data priming challenge is perhaps where the company needs to focus.

Overall, I like the design principles and implementation of the site. True, there are some beta (and alpha) level bugs (I'm having trouble loading up a small data set right now), but that is not exceptional in the highly iterative web application world.

It is going to be very interesting to see how the site grows and evolves as a consequence. Is it a commercial version of IBM's Many Eyes? A twist on DataMarket or InfoChimps? A reimplentation of Swivels (the YouTube of data)?

Comments

[MomokoPrice]

Hi Matt,

Thanks very much for this, I know our CTO Pete Forde holds your evaluations in high regard and follows you closely. And any and all feedback we get during our development is extremely valuable. Please keep it coming!

I think your pinpointing the need to resolve one of two critical issues (providing immediate benefit to the user or averting a cold start) are spot-on, and your question of whether or not BuzzData does this is worth addressing (and our CTO/CEO would be happy to discuss with you further, if you'd like).

You're right: the issue of providing immediate benefit to the user depends on what you consider a benefit. BuzzData indeed does consider social features, community curation, high user/portfolio visibility and extreme ease-of-use to be genuine value-adds for data enthusiasts, as they have proven to be for other kinds of enthusiasts (Flickr for photogs; YouTube/Vimeo for video enthusiasts/journalists/general public, Github for programmers). We believe that limiting value-adds for the data community to either tools or data alone is very likely holding back collaborative innovation in the data space. This is what we want to change.

A good example of the kind of crossdisciplinary data collaboration that excites us was written recently about on open-data advocate David Eaves's blog last week:

http://eaves.ca/2011/08/03/open-source-data-journalism-%E2%80%93-happening-now-at-buzz-data/

Only a small instance, but exciting nonetheless for us, considering we just launched. :)

We really hope to see more of it, and will continue to iterate BuzzData's design to foster it. Along these lines, you can be sure that our ultimate vision for BuzzData also includes significant workflow tools designed for data collaboration that we still have coming down the pipeline. I believe those will really speak to the kind of individual user benefits you are expecting!

Cheers,

Momoko (BuzzData communications director)

[Joey Carlisle]

I got an initial invite before BuzzData went public and I like it so far. I even have a few people following me. Unfortunately I'm new to this market so I don't know exactly where to start. I was thinking of asking people on there what kind of data they are looking for and seeing if I could provide that.

Do you have any thoughts?

[Matthew Hurst]

Joey - one thing you might consider is to look at getthedata.org This is a site dedicated to connecting people with data (though not hosting the data or visualizations itself). It would be interesting if a site like BuzzData could also provide this function. Most data market sites are markets for extant data. But a clearing house for data requests, which is a little like getthedata.org , is also interesting.

[Momoko Price]

Hey Matt,

Thought you might like to read this followup post on BuzzData's direction/master plan that I drafted this weekend:

http://blog.buzzdata.com/post/9248725748/what-buzzdata-will-and-wont-be

Also - just wanted to let you know that your idea for a get-the-data function on BuzzData is something I've been mulling over myself recently; was stoked to see just now that you'd thought of it, too.

Last: Joey Carlisle — I think the best way to get into the flow of BuzzData is to upload datasets and explicitly invite collaborators to examine/improve/expand it. Even small changes and cursory glances by others can improve and clarify the meaning of a dataset dramatically. Am currently writing a new post on this soon for our blog and newsletter. Stay tuned.