The Land Beyond Transactions 2The Land Beyond Transactions 2

Another area where metadata mining is surfacing is in Web logging and RSS feeds. The explosion of blogs and the generation of automatic XML-based RSS newsfeeds to quickly syndicate content from all kinds of Web sites has created a whole new data stream that can be used for analytic applications such as innovation tracking, competitor intelligence, and reputation management, among others. IMN approaches RSS analytics from a marketing perspective. It aims to make RSS feeds bidirectional so that providers of RSS feeds can learn more about what subscribers to the feeds use the data for so that the feed can be modified to better suit those needs. In contrast, BlogStreet is offering what it calls Blog Post Analytics to search for and analyze blog posts based on keywords from a set of indexed blogs.

These new data streams, leveraging location data and metadata, have the potential to create many new analytic applications. Location analytics are set to change the way we buy and sell based on where consumers are — not who they are — inform decisions about where to locate items within a store or stores within a neighborhood, and better predict supply and demand chain problems and opportunities. Metadata mining opens up the possibility of a whole new set of vertical analytics focused on specific schema-based data streams that will provide highly targeted mining of the data underneath the metadata. Let's face it, transaction analytics are now the "legacy system" in business performance management. Hasta la vista, baby!

Stewart McKie is an independent consultant and technology writer specializing in analytic, enterprise resource management, and Web services applications. Reach him via his Web site at www.cfoinfo.com.

Resources

VENDORS TO WATCH IN RFID DATA ANALYSIS

VENDORS AND INFORMATION RESOURCES FOR METADATA ANALYSIS