The amount of data being transmitted and shared over the internet is outstanding. Interestingly, a large chunk of the trillion-ton data ocean is not created by large corporations, but by individuals across the globe. It would be interesting to look at the statistics –
- The number of tweets have increased by almost over 25% since 2013 to over 3.5 lakh tweets every minute.
- From the period between 2013 to 2016, the number of posts shared over facebook has increased by over ~23% from twenty-five lakh posts to 30 lakh posts every minute. This, has been up from 6.5 lakh posts per minute in 2011.
- Almost 6 billion posts are liked on facebook every single day.
- In the period from 2014- 2016, YouTube usage has increased to an upload quantum of video content of over 400 hours every minute, every day.
- Instagram witnesses almost 2.5 million post likes every minute.
- Google provides search results to over four million search requests every day, every minute.
- Close to four million text messages are sent every minute across the United States of America
(The above data has been sourced from a third party independent blog – blog.microfocus.com and is dated as on August 2016.)
With so much data floating around and the types of needs for such data increasing, there are endless number of use cases across the spectrum of personal as well as business cases.
Following are a few among the most common use cases for web scraping and data extraction.
Research and Analytics
Data is the bedrock for all types of research and analytics endeavors. Using data in a structured form makes the research and analytics efforts much smoother and efficient. Using web scraping and data extraction services to fetch data in a consumption ready format makes life easier for the research analyst. Using web scraping services to fetch relevant data sets at a regular frequency interval ensures that the research analyst is furnished with all relevant data oints and sets at the right time.
Using web scraping services is a preferred operational decision for research and analytical functions across various sectors.
Marketing and lead generation
Web scraping services can be used to scrape information such as name, contact details, profession, place of residence etc. to be used for marketing and lead generation processes. The easiest way to do this is by scraping and extracting data from social media website profiles and open forum profiles. This helps marketers understand and analyse their target cohorts with much more detail and clarity.
Using this set of structured user data and profile helps businesses market their products and services in a more targeted and efficient manner.
Understanding and monitoring peer strategy
To stay a step ahead of your peers, it is always advisable to stay on top of the number game. It is always advisable to at least be cognizant of your peer’s pricing and positioning strategies. Understanding your peers’ pricing and product positioning on almost a real-time frequency allows you to observe, adapt and improvise on their strategy and hence keeping you ahead in the game. Continuous monitoring and tracking of price levels can help you maneuver around the flash sale declared by your competitor or may allow you to stock up and offer a product when you see the inventory level held by your competitor as insufficient.
Having more data will always keep you and your strategies ahead of your peers especially if you operate in a space with homogenous products and very high levels of competition. Having an automated real-time web scraping software like a web scraping and data extraction rest API would hold you in good stead and contribute largely to your business growth
We, at BotScraper are focused on delivering the right data, at the right time, I the right format.