What is Big Data? How has it evolved over the last few years?

Question

The role of open data, especially in the government / public sector.
Rule 1: “If you can fit it on a DVD (4.7 GB), you may still call it small data. Anything larger than that can be called big data.”
Rule 2: “MB and GB are small; TB and more are big.”
Good news: Most companies still do not have big data — and do not need big data for big gains.
Magnitude of Big Data (Source: Forbes):
- EVERY MINUTE:
  - YouTube users watch 4,146,600 videos (≈ 20,000 DVDs streamed per minute)
  - Instagram users post 46,740 photos
  - There are 154,200 calls on Skype
- EVERY DAY:
  - 5 billion people are active on Facebook daily
  - Google processes more than 40,000 searches every second (≈ 5 billion searches per day)