Chinese Internet firms dig big data gold

Smart data management is, undoubtedly, better than traditional data calculation. China is becoming the world's top big data market. The trend is especially clear when the economy is not in the best of shape. [Photo / China Daily]

BEIJING - Chinese Internet companies have been exploring business opportunities based on big data analytics during the world's largest human migration.

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Baidu, China's top search engine, launched a real-time migration map during the Spring Festival travel rush, which the Ministry of Transport estimates will witness 3.62 billion trips before it ends on Feb 24.

The "Baidu Migrate" heat map gathers data from smartphones installed with Baidu Maps or other applications using Location Based Service (LBS) platforms, which receive 3.5 billion position requests every day in China, according to Baidu.

By analyzing the mass data, the map depicts the most popular destinations, points of origin and travel routes throughout the country during the Spring Festival.

It shows the trip between Chengdu, capital of southwest China's Sichuan province, and Beijing has been the most popular travel route, which surprised many Internet users.

Giving the general public such insight on social phenomena is just one of the applications of big data, which refers to collection of enormous sets of data that can not be analyzed using traditional processing. The statistics can also be used by businesses and governments to look at trends and optimize service.

It is hard to put a figure on the estimated value of this emerging market, but online enterprises are eager to harness big data's potential.

Baidu is not the only Internet company in China digging the perceived goldmine. Alipay, the country's largest third-party online payment platform under ecommerce giant Alibaba Group, set up a similar program last month.

Another Alibaba subsidiary, key consumer-to-consumer sales platform Taobao.com, also took a share of the spoils. It released Chinese migration data for the whole of 2013 that was based on analysis of changes to users' default delivery addresses.