Business Matters Data Special

Big data is addictive. Companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter benefit from selling consumers’ data to advertisers, but with a growing social media landscape an increasing number of us are quite willing to hand it data over.

The BBC's Mark Whittaker is joined by the Data Editor of The Economist magazine, Kenn Cukier and the Chief Technology Officer of Rackspace, Alan Perkins.

They discuss the phenomenal uses of data profiling and how it can add value to individual lives, even the extent of curing diseases.