Nice to see that deep web come to the surface with interactive goodies! - Sean Canton from twhirl

although i have to admit, i want to see more then unemployment and population - Sean Canton from twhirl

Looks like we are entering the world of WebWarehousing without the need for(R)OLAP to provide new forms of realtime Business Intelligence of large datasets. Thus I agree that the golden nuggets for both Facebook, Twitter as well as Google is in the analysis of the massive aggregate of data which is why I think it is smart of Facebook to not allow 3rd party developers to access/cache more than 24hours of data. I imagine that data will slowly move to the cloud and then be semantically structured in realtime for analysis. - sam sethi from FriendFeed MT Plugin

This could blow the doors off spin, couldn't it? Imagine the discomfort of a politico trying to squirm away from obvious, trended reports which anyone can produce? I'd want to see things which are relevant to me, though. Sure these are great, but I'm not going to pull up a trend of wheat prices before buying bread. What connections could this be making to improve lives at an individual level? We tend to forget that the "macro" world is an aggregate of real-life individual choises and lives. Unemployment is one thing on a graph, another in a pink slip in your inbox. - Zach Beauvais from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Google flu trends showed how this could be useful (eg. ensuring anti retroviral drugs were correctly distributed). Or imagine how swifter analysis of migration trends (UK official census only every 10 years, for example) could lead to local authority and core service provision could be increased in line with - rather than a pitifully long time after - demand. Still, as with all things, knowledge is power and should be used widely. - Katie Dob