Social-network-sourced big data analytics

Very large datasets, also known as big data, originate from many domains, including healthcare, energy, weather, business, and social networks. Deriving knowledge is more difficult than ever when we must do it by intricately processing big data. Organizations rely on third-party, commodity computing resources or clouds to gather the computational resources required to manipulate data of this magnitude. Although social networks are perhaps among the largest big data producers, the collaboration that results from leveraging this paradigm could help to solve big data processing challenges. Here, the authors explore using personal ad hoc clouds comprised of individuals in social networks to address such challenges. © 2013 IEEE.