Update: Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science
We update our analysis of top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science. The largest groups grow faster than smaller ones, the number of discussions is growing, but engagement and comments are declining. Are groups reaching saturation?
We update our
analysis of Top 30 LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science (thanks to Anmol Rajpurohit for collecting the stats) and find several interesting trends:
Here are the 10 largest groups (by membership as of Oct 31, 2014), and their annualized rate of growth
We note that the 6 largest groups (in bold above, each with over 35,000 members), were in the same order as on Mar 31, 2014. While the overall growth rate slowed down, as expected, the 6 largest groups grew at an annual rate of 57%, faster than the bottom 24 groups (32%) - see Fig 1.
Fig. 1: Top LinkedIn groups in Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, Data Science, 2013-14 growth for top 6 vs bottom 24 groups.
Here are 10 groups with the fastest annualized growth (Nov 25, 2013 to Oct 31, 2014)
The chart below shows group growth vs group size. Color corresponds to growth rate in 2014 vs 2013 - redder is faster, bluer is slower. Group name abbreviations are in the table below.
Fig. 2: Top LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data, Data Science Groups, Nov 2014: size vs growth
The two main measures of group activity are discussions (posts)/week and comments/week.
The figure below compares the average group size with discussions and comments/week. We note that although group size and discussions are growing, the absolute number of comments is actually steadily declining, perhaps because members are feeling overwhelmed with too many posts.
Fig. 3: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data groups, 2013-2014,
Average size, comments/week, discussions/week
Since these numbers clearly depend on the group size, it is more interesting to compare them relative to group size (per 1000 members). The next figure shows that both comments and discussions relative to group size are declining.
Fig. 4: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data groups, 2013-2014,
Average size, comments/week, discussions/week per 1000 members
The chart below shows group comments/week per 1,000 members vs group discussions/week per 1,000 members. Group name abbreviations are in the table below. Since the distributions of comments and discussions are very asymetrical, we use median values of rather than average.
Fig 5: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data groups, Mar - Oct 2014,
comments/week vs discussions/week per 1000 members
4 Quadrants: Active, Commenting, Posting, and Passive
For better separation of groups, both axes are on logarithmic scale
The median lines on each dimension create 4 quadrants:
The groups with the highest comments/week per /1000 members:
The groups with the highest discussions/week per /1000 members:
The details are in the table with below, with groups ordered by the number of members.
The growth, comments, and discussions are in green font if that value is 25% above median,
in red if 25% below median, and in black otherwise. We note that there are 7 "triple green" groups, that are at least 25% above median on all 3 key parameters: growth, comments, and discussions:
Table 1: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science groups.
Comments and Discussions are for period Mar - Oct 2014.
Here are past analyses:
I have used this set of 30 groups for consistency since 2013. What large and relevant groups am I missing? What other trends do you see?
- The rate of growth slows down
- The largest groups grow faster than smaller groups
- number of discussions increases, but engagement (comments relative to both number of members, and to number of discussions) is down. Are the LinkedIn members being overwhelmed by too many posts?
- some groups continue to be very active, especially RDataMining, Data Scientists, KDnuggets, and Big Data and Analytics.
Here are the 10 largest groups (by membership as of Oct 31, 2014), and their annualized rate of growth
- Advanced Business Analytics, Data Mining and Predictive Modeling: 154,965 members, 58% growth in 12 months
- Big Data | Analytics | Strategy | Finance | Innovation (formerly Big Data / Analytics / Strategy / Finance / FP&A ...): 117,643 members, 49% growth
- Big Data and Analytics: 100,355 members, 81% growth
- Business Analytics: 63,031 members, 34% growth
- Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Data Visualization: 59,646 members, 87% growth
- BIG DATA Professionals - Architects Scientists Analytics Experts: 38,640 members, 56% growth
- Machine Learning Connection 24,893 members, 32% growth
- Next Gen Market Research (NGMR) 23,954 members, 5% growth
- SAS Analytics & BI 23,641 members, 22% growth
- Pattern Recognition, Data Data Mining, Machine Intelligence 20,092 members, 46% growth
We note that the 6 largest groups (in bold above, each with over 35,000 members), were in the same order as on Mar 31, 2014. While the overall growth rate slowed down, as expected, the 6 largest groups grew at an annual rate of 57%, faster than the bottom 24 groups (32%) - see Fig 1.
Fig. 1: Top LinkedIn groups in Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, Data Science, 2013-14 growth for top 6 vs bottom 24 groups.
Here are 10 groups with the fastest annualized growth (Nov 25, 2013 to Oct 31, 2014)
- RDataMining: 120%
- Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Data Visualization: 87%
- Data Scientists: 82%
- Big Data and Analytics: 81%
- KDnuggets Analytics and Data Mining: 73%
- Predictive Analytics Network (PAN): 62%
- Advanced Business Analytics, Data Mining and Predictive Modeling: 58%
- BIG DATA Professionals - Architects Scientists Analytics Experts: 56%
- Machine Learning and Data Science (former Data Science Central): 53%
- Big Data | Analytics | Strategy | Finance | Innovation: 49%
The chart below shows group growth vs group size. Color corresponds to growth rate in 2014 vs 2013 - redder is faster, bluer is slower. Group name abbreviations are in the table below.
Fig. 2: Top LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data, Data Science Groups, Nov 2014: size vs growth
The two main measures of group activity are discussions (posts)/week and comments/week.
The figure below compares the average group size with discussions and comments/week. We note that although group size and discussions are growing, the absolute number of comments is actually steadily declining, perhaps because members are feeling overwhelmed with too many posts.
Fig. 3: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data groups, 2013-2014,
Average size, comments/week, discussions/week
Since these numbers clearly depend on the group size, it is more interesting to compare them relative to group size (per 1000 members). The next figure shows that both comments and discussions relative to group size are declining.
Fig. 4: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data groups, 2013-2014,
Average size, comments/week, discussions/week per 1000 members
The chart below shows group comments/week per 1,000 members vs group discussions/week per 1,000 members. Group name abbreviations are in the table below. Since the distributions of comments and discussions are very asymetrical, we use median values of rather than average.
Fig 5: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data groups, Mar - Oct 2014,
comments/week vs discussions/week per 1000 members
4 Quadrants: Active, Commenting, Posting, and Passive
For better separation of groups, both axes are on logarithmic scale
The median lines on each dimension create 4 quadrants:
- Active: both discussions and comments above median: Advanced Analytics; Big Data and Analytics; BIG DATA Professionals; Business Analytics; Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Data Visualization; Data Scientists; KDnuggets; Next Gen Market Research (NGMR); PAN; RDataMining;
- Commenting: comments above median, discussions below median: Advanced Analytics, Predictive Modeling & Statistical Analyses; Advanced Business Analytics, Data Mining and Predictive Modeling; Machine Learning Connection; Pattern Recognition; Research Methods and Data Science; Text Analytics;
- Posting: comments below median, discussions/posts above median: Business Analytics; Business Intelligence Tools; Data & Text Analytics Professionals; Machine Learning & Data Science (former DSC); Global Analytics Network; SAS & Analytics Users;
- Passive (both comments and posts below median): Big Data ASFI; Business Intelligence & Analytics Group; Data Mining Technology; Healthcare Data Mining and Modeling; Lavastorm Analytics Community Group; PMML; SAS Analytics & BI; Visual Analytics
The groups with the highest comments/week per /1000 members:
- RDataMining, 2.6
- Data Scientists, 1.7
- KDnuggets Analytics/ Data Mining/ and Data Science, 1.41
The groups with the highest discussions/week per /1000 members:
- KDnuggets Analytics/ Data Mining/ and Data Science, 9.41
- Data Scientists, 7.08
- Big Data and Analytics, 2.99
The details are in the table with below, with groups ordered by the number of members.
The growth, comments, and discussions are in green font if that value is 25% above median,
in red if 25% below median, and in black otherwise. We note that there are 7 "triple green" groups, that are at least 25% above median on all 3 key parameters: growth, comments, and discussions:
- Big Data and Analytics
- Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Data Visualization
- BIG DATA Professionals - Architects Scientists Analytics Experts
- Predictive Analytics Network (PAN) (PAN)
- Data Scientists
- RDataMining
- KDnuggets Analytics, Data Mining, and Data Science
Table 1: Top 30 LinkedIn Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science groups.
Comments and Discussions are for period Mar - Oct 2014.
| LinkedIn Group | Members (Oct 31, 2014) | Growth annualized |
Cmt/ week per 1K members | Disc/ week per 1K members |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Median | 16577 | 34% | 0.49 | 1.07 |
Advanced Business Analytics, Data Mining and Predictive Modeling (Adv BADM) |
154965 | 58.3% | 0.98 | 1.06 |
Big Data | Analytics | Strategy | Finance | Innovation (Big Data ASFI) |
117643 | 49.0% | 0.36 | 0.99 |
Big Data and Analytics (Big Data & A) |
100355 | 81.0% | 0.93 | 2.99 |
Business Analytics (Biz Analytics) |
63031 | 33.7% | 0.49 | 1.84 |
Data Mining, Statistics, Big Data, and Data Visualization (DM Stat) |
59646 | 87.5% | 0.67 | 2.44 |
BIG DATA Professionals - Architects Scientists Analytics Experts... (BD Prof) |
38640 | 56.3% | 0.74 | 2.01 |
Machine Learning Connection (ML Conn) |
24893 | 31.7% | 0.67 | 0.44 |
Next Gen Market Research (NGMR) (NGMR) |
23954 | 5.4% | 1.05 | 1.13 |
SAS Analytics & BI (SAS A&BI) |
23641 | 21.6% | 0.24 | 0.2 |
| Pattern Recognition, Data Mining, Machine Intelligence (PR) | 20092 | 46.5% | 0.98 | 0.13 |
Global Analytics Network (Global A) |
20025 | 5.4% | 0.1 | 1.61 |
Business Intelligence & Analytics Group (BI&A) |
20000 | 0.0% | 0.1 | 0.87 |
Machine Learning & Data Science, former Data Science Central, (ML/DSC) |
17207 | 52.7% | 0.4 | 1.93 |
Research Methods and Data Science (RMDS) |
17128 | 30.6% | 0.49 | 1.01 |
SAS & Analytics Users (SAS Users) |
16596 | 25.4% | 0.21 | 1.1 |
Actuary Predictive Modeling, Data Mining, and Statistics (Actuary) |
16558 | 20.3% | 0.2 | 0.06 |
Text Analytics (Text A) |
15491 | 21.3% | 0.99 | 0.75 |
Advanced Analytics (Adv A) |
14482 | 42.9% | 0.61 | 1.75 |
Predictive Analytics Network (PAN) |
10190 | 61.6% | 0.7 | 2.84 |
Visual Analytics (Visual) |
10007 | 40.0% | 0.28 | 0.93 |
Data Scientists (Dscientists) |
9894 | 82.4% | 1.7 | 7.08 |
Advanced Analytics/ Predictive Modeling & Statistical Analyses (Adv AP) |
8701 | 38.1% | 0.78 | 0.13 |
Data & Text Analytics Professionals (D&TA Prof) |
8531 | 13.8% | 0.22 | 1.24 |
RDataMining (RDM) |
7737 | 120.5% | 2.6 | 1.78 |
Lavastorm Analytics Community Group (Lavastorm) |
6828 | 12.8% | 0.03 | 0.2 |
KDnuggets Analytics, Data Mining, and Data Science (KDnuggets) |
6594 | 72.9% | 1.41 | 9.41 |
Data Mining Technology (DMT) |
4674 | 28.7% | 0.09 | 0.62 |
Healthcare Data Mining and Modeling (Healthcare) |
4207 | 34.2% | 0.46 | 0.59 |
Predictive Model Markup Language (PMML) |
3779 | 9.3% | 0.14 | 0.14 |
Business Intelligence Tools (BI Tools) |
3265 | 16.8% | 0.41 | 1.08 |
Here are past analyses:
- Top LinkedIn Groups in 2014 for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science, Apr 2014.
- Top 2013 LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science, Dec 2013.
- Top LinkedIn Groups for Analytics, Big Data, Data Mining, and Data Science, Apr 2013.
I have used this set of 30 groups for consistency since 2013. What large and relevant groups am I missing? What other trends do you see?
