So I have to admit that the “Binders full of women” comment blew right past me when I was listening to Monday night’s debate as I was driving in my car on Highway 85 on my way home.  However, by the time I got home, the Twitterverse was all lit up about that topic and I had to wonder about all of the information that Amazon must be processing to target people to buy the latest TrapperKeeper (or TrapHerKeepHer) binder for their tween children. 

Is there any real value in all that social media data?  Are people who are commenting about binder sales actually buying more binders?  Does the trending in Twitter on this topic predict future trends in the direction of presidential polling?  Can the Obama and Romney campaigns use this data to micro target voters with specific campaign materials that could sway their votes in one direction or another?

There is a bunch of data to consume there and I guess we could call that all big data.  But what amount of it useful to enterprises?  So as we look towards the future of processing all of this data, as I don’t think it is yet information, some of it might only be interesting as a passing political fancy, or might be interesting as social scientists analyze this kind of data feed against other information as they reflect on Election year politics.

So the question for today is, what is it that makes big data information “analytics” versus just  somewhat humorous noise (see “No one puts Baby in a Binder” or “ Trap Her Keep Her ” )?