BusinessWeek blogger Stephen Baker, after getting "scooped", if you will, by one of his magazine's other sections, asks the rhetorical question of why McGraw-Hill, SAP, and Goldman would want to invest in LinkedIn? Answer: the data. Baker probably gets this more than most, judging by what I've read so far in his book The Numerati. Data streams will continue to increase in value. How that value is measured depends upon the purchaser and what has to be provided to the data subject to obtain their data. I understand that I give up some privacy and potentially subject myself to some advertisement by providing LinkedIn with my data. However, the benefit of managing my network and mining opportunities from it is a worthwhile trade-off (to me and several million other users, at least).
What would it take to get YOUR data? What data wouldn't you give up?
