The point we may be missing.

The point we may be missing.

As I become familiar with the data journey of many companies and their eagerness to learn about their customers, I can not help but notice that they may be overlooking an ongoing change: the transformation of social platforms.

Many companies rely on social data to gather insights and conduct sentiment analysis about their products and services. But are they collecting the best data? When we think of social media, we usually think of the usual suspects: Facebook , Twiite , Instagram and even LinkedIn . But social media is evolving, moving away from the traditional understanding of a social network to a true social platform where the social interaction goes beyond posting a picture or a piece of text. Social platforms are games, voice platforms, or virtual (aka. Meta verse) applications themselves.

Take Roblox , a game with 22 million daily active users in 2020 that now has 66 million, as an example. The data these platforms can provide not only on young consumers, but also on customers with higher purchasing power (e.g., their parents) is invaluable. Companies tend to think of these platforms as "just games," and at most place a little advertising here and there. However, they overlook the fact that these people are not playing Robloxs because it is their favorite game, but because it is their social network. The same goes for other platforms, like Minecraft , Fortnite Creative, TikTok , Discord , Twitch etc.

Like many other things, this is nothing new. It's just something that has been growing under the radar for quite some time. Gamers of the 90s may remember playing #CounterStrike not just to win the game, but also because they enjoyed live interaction with their online opponents and teammates. Speech-to-text and #NLP technologies make it much easier today than in the past to collect #data, analyze it, and gain insights. Companies themselves could join the platforms.

Data is the new currency, and those who look beyond today's traditional data sources are the ones who will benefit the most tomorrow.