From a company with not exactly the same privacy standards or data mining needs as
Wikimedia, but still an interesting read:
http://www.technologyreview.com/featured-story/428150/what-facebook-knows/
Begin forwarded message:
Date: June 14, 2012 11:05:22 AM PDT
Subject: Profile of Facebook Data Science Team
Source: FlowingData
Author: Nathan Yau
MIT Technology Review profiles the Facebook Data Science Team, described as a gathering
of grad students at a top school and headed by Cameron Marlow, the "young
professor."
Back at Facebook, Marlow isn't the one who makes decisions about what the company
charges for, even if his work will shape them. Whatever happens, he says, the primary goal
of his team is to support the well-being of the people who provide Facebook with their
data, using it to make the service smarter. Along the way, he says, he and his colleagues
will advance humanity's understanding of itself. That echoes Zuckerberg's often
doubted but seemingly genuine belief that Facebook's job is to improve how the world
communicates. Just don't ask yet exactly what that will entail. "It's hard to
predict where we'll go, because we're at the very early stages of this
science," says Marlow. "The number of potential things that we could ask of
Facebook's data is enormous."
Related
Facebook status updates: young people are self-centered and old ramble
Data Science is catching on
Taking a Look at Facebook Statistics from All Facebook
Read more…