How Journalists Used Big Data to Uncover Royal Dutch Shell’s Deals with Iran

It’s not just individuals that should be concerned about their privacy. With the enormous amount of digital information publicly available, companies have every reason to be concerned as well. 

As the Dutch documentary “Big Data: de Shell Search” shows, analyzing publicly available large datasets can reveal what would have otherwise remained a company secret.

Shell Search: visualizing the connection between companies, governments, people, places and times. Image credit: http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/nieuws/2013/oktober/powermap.html

Data-driven journalism

Data-driven journalism is a relatively new practice, defined as “a journalistic process based on analyzing and filtering large data sets for the purpose of creating a news story”.

As a famous example, big data analysis methods were employed by news agencies to make sense of the 251,287 US diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks. This dataset was also part of the data analyzed in the aforementioned documentary, to find out more about Royal Dutch Shell’s at times secretive business practices.

A Google Engineer Explains Why Google+ Sucks: Platforms vs. Products

You probably remember the guest lecture on platform-mediated networks by Prof. Marshall van Alstyne, right? He also shared some slides, and this one on Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos caught my attention:

Bezos Platform Mandate. Source: http://www.slideshare.net/InfoEcon/platform-strategy-ibm-72511

I googled this so-called “Bezos Platform Mandate” to learn more about it. I expected it to be part of an article Bezos published, or maybe a presentation he did.

As it turns out, the quote is part of an infamous rant by Google engineer Steve Yegge, that was accidentally made public. It was meant as an internal memo, highlighting some key differences between Amazon and Google. It provides an honest, uncensored and at times hilarious insight into the differences between these companies in terms of culture.