Social media and big data: A conceptual foundation for organizations

The introduction of new and the evolution of existing social media technologies have enabled efficient and broader communication through online social interaction. Today consumers' thinking has shifted towards their trusted network for guidance rather than simply accepting what organisations tell them. With the advent of social interaction, knowledge management paradigms are being stretched beyond their ability to deliver useful results, which is forcing change within organisations globally. Using only transactional and internal data will result in mistaken conclusions or missed opportunities. Social media helps organisations acquire and manage massive amounts of data to better understand their customers, products, competition, and markets and make better decisions using Big Data solutions. These solutions enable organisations to decide on the basis of evidence rather than intuition. This chapter introduces Big Data, Big Data technologies used for capturing knowledge from social media and discusses Big Data Solutions for organizations.