Yesterday I came across this Reuters article by
In insurance Big Data could lower rates for optimistic tweeters.
The title employs a common marketing rule. Frame bad news as good news. Instead of saying, Big data shifts costs to pessimistic tweeters, mention only those who will benefit.
So, what’s going on? In the usual big data fashion, it’s not entirely clear. But the idea is your future health will be measured by your tweets and your premium will go up if it’s bad news. From the article:
In a study cited by the Swiss group last month, researchers found Twitter data alone a more reliable predictor of heart disease than all standard health and socioeconomic measures combined.
Geographic regions represented by particularly high use of negative-emotion and expletive words corresponded to higher occurrences of fatal heart disease in those communities.
To be clear, no insurance company is…
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