Social networks represent a huge source of unstructured data, and Thismoment is among the vendors that help marketers make use of all that information to improve their brand image. The firm is one of the leading solutions providers in this field with over $33 million in funding raised to date, and it’s DEC platform is going to receive a big update that will unlock a lot more of Facebook’s potential.

The company said that a future version of the software will be support Open Graph, an advanced API that the social network makes available to developers that want to go beyond basic  integration.  More importantly, however, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said that over one billion objects are being shared via Open Graph daily – activity that DEC users will be able to tap into and analyze. The upcoming release will come with a publishing tool that will enable business users to customize their campaigns based on this feed.

Picture-sharing service Pinterest is also caught up in the analytics fray.  Mellisa recently got the chance to look into some of the more popular tools that leverage image recognition and other technologies to identify trends and spot the most influential users on the site.

The Olympics is one of the biggest trending topics right now, but big data ties in with occasion from more than one angle. In an effort to defend against hackers the organizers have set up a system that curates log data in order to detect all kinds of anomalies  that may prove to be serious attempts to disrupt the event.

Lastly, this week DataDirect Networks announced a new management platform that’s designed to automate the administration of environments leveraging its storage solutions.