Every piece of technology we use can generate “Big Data.” Everything from which videos we click (and how long we watch them) on YouTube to our likes on Facebook says a lot about us — and increasingly, more and more sophisticated algorithms are being designed to learn about us from our clicks and not-clicks.
I want to use Netflix’s digital platform to demonstrate big data, which I frequently use. Netflix collects all information you provide: your name, email address, address, payment method, or review rating. They also automatically collect what platforms you watch Netflix on (such as a smartphone, tablet, computer, Smart TV, or streaming box), your IP address (so it knows where you are logging in from), watch history and search queries, how long you have watched a show, and interactions with customer service. Every click, or interaction you make, generates big data for Netflix.
In my opinion, Netflix uses Amazon’s Amazon Simple Storage Service to warehouse its data. S3 is an object storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. This means customers of all sizes and industries can use it to store and protect any amount of data for a range of use cases, such as data lakes, websites, cloud-native applications, backups, archives, machine learning, and analytics. Therefore, Netflix uses S3 to store its enormous data.
Reference:
Amazon Web Service (AWS) 2021, accessed Oct 18th, 2021, <https://aws.amazon.com/pm/serv-s3/>
USA TODAY 2021, accessed Oct 18th, 2021, <https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/saltzman/2018/04/17/you-can-see-what-netflix-knows-you-but-you-cant-download/510782002/>
