The next generation of the internet and how data will win [TNW]

Jon Oringer, founder and CEO of Shutterstock is pretty data crazy. Then again, he should be. His company currently stores around 1TB of data everyday. According to Oringer, data will win the internet and every single business is a data driven business even if it’s not the core product.

Speaking at the The Next Web conference in New York City, Oringer outlined three ways that data is driving business today and how this will define the next generation of the net. He highlights that not only data driven technologies and but data driven behaviours will change this.

He says his photo market place, which went public in 2012, is at its core a tech company that is driven by data.

Data is your product

“Data is your product, it drives the interface,” says Oringer. “The more information you have the better your business is and the more competitive advantage you have.”

The way he sees it, every company should collect data to give users a better experience and that data should drive the decisions you make about your company.

“For the last 10 years we have been building visualisation tools to help us understand the data we have. We focus on how users search and very single search help us help the user,” says Oringer.

He points to two rules that every company should have when it comes to data: make sure to track behavioural data and make data accessible.

Lens into the business

Oringer says that data allows Shutterstock to understand its ecosystem and the way people use the platform. The company has created tools that allow it to use the data being provided both by users and contributors to understand the business a lot better.

“Our data is organically grown, we don’t tell the contributors what to create we let the data do that,” he says.

So if you want to get some insights into your business, the way your consumers see you, get to mining that data and see what kind of picture it paints.

Data is growth

Data helps you grow your business, says Oringer, and you can get that data by attracting consumers. He suggests finding out what consumers like by testing, adding that it will eventually lead to converting visitors to consumers. He also believes that you should watch what your employees are using and use that to create more products.

At Shutterstock, Origner has built tools that he says have helped the company use the data that it has collected to grow the business.

He feels that not enough companies are harnessing the power of the data that they have because they are not collecting it.