One especially noteworthy data town hall discussion we’re featuring here, led by Ken Jee, centered around the data influencers’ perspectives on web data, along with an enthusiastic Q&A taken live from Youtube viewers.
Mark Freeman, a startup data scientist, started the discussion by delving into what he called the “murkiness” of retrieving good web data without using a data collection tool like Bright Data.
“I’ve had projects where we’re trying to build the MVP of something and just dealing with where we find the data is a huge challenge”
Internet data influencer and engineer Shashank Kalanithi continued on data’s common pain points:
“For me, the hardest part of [any project] is getting good data. I tried to scrape a number of job listing sites for real time data and I got blocked almost every time. It’s a shame that public web data isn’t always easily accessible.”
Notable MLOps Engineer, Miki Bazeley, continued to explain the technical challenges that exist in web data extraction today, and why solutions like Bright Data are so exciting. “Especially if you’re an enterprise company or you’re a startup and you’re trying to move fast, one of the best ways to move fast is to not have to move slow because you’re constantly fixing things.”
Zach Wilson, of Youtube channel @Datawithzack, likewise described the benefits of an automated tool like Bright Data with great excitement.
One of the very common things that companies can do with web data is they want to get better insights into their competitors. If you have a competitive platform… it’s not like your competitors are going to give you that data, one call away. They’re going to make it a pain, and that’s where web data can be really really powerful. Because of the nature of the contracts, your scraper is probably going to break. That’s what I really like about Bright Data. It can validate your scrape.”
The group, in agreement, then further delved into Bright Data’s nearly-impeccable solutions. “It can be really valuable to outsource… and again that’s one of those really cool things about Bright Data… They use an incredible proxy system,” spoke Ken Jee. “If you have a company and your product or your models are reliant upon outside data, that can be really unreliable. It’s very hard to build infrastructure around that if it’s constantly changing. Obviously Bright Data is the best solution because they’re maintaining it and you’re essentially outsourcing it to them.”
To which Ken then asked the group, “Is that the best solution?”
The group of fifteen-plus top data influencers in the world agreed. Indeed, Bright Data is today’s most exciting data solution. Be sure to watch the full video to see the entire “data avengers” discussion, along with their exciting take on Bright Data’s toolbox of offerings!
