There is a strong incentive and, admittedly, one reinforced by funders for social entrepreneurs to generate and amass data related to their social change efforts.

FORBES: When Measuring Impact, Ask the Right Questions

But it has proved harder to use than to amass data.

ECONOMIST: The trials of megabanks

The goal is to amass a consistent set of data across a broad geographic region and sense it periodically to develop temporal data sets.

FORBES: Location Intelligence - The Future Looks Bright

Radius has spent the past two and a half years crawling the Web to amass half a billion pieces of data on every small business in the United States.

FORBES: Radius: How Facebook's Youngest Hire Is Tackling The Local Data Problem

The real value is going to be in the data Twitter already has and continues to amass about topics, people and their connections.

FORBES: Can Twitter Afford To Snub Facebook and Google?