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Heidi Allstop was a Junior year psychology student when she launched her online business Student Spill, a website where students can anonymously submit descriptions of their personal problems and receive responses within 24 hours from trained student supporters.

Now available on 10 campuses around the United States, Student Spill provides a simple method of offering support and of gathering information about what kinds of support a school's students really need. "Usually universities are wrong in their assumptions," Allstop says. "They have no way to get insight into what is bothering students, to know what students are crying on their pillows about." Spill-using schools can leverage the data the service provides for student retention, risk mitigation, suicide prevention and to develop recommendations for services they should consider. It's an excellent example of value created through analysis of aggregate social app user data.

Youth social networking researcher danah boyd has observed that many people presume the way they use social networks is the way everyone uses them. "I interviewed gay men who thought Friendster was a gay dating site because all they saw were other gay men," she says. "I interviewed teens who believed that everyone on MySpace was Christian because all of the profiles they saw contained biblical quotes. We all live in our own worlds with people who share our values and, with networked media, it's often hard to see beyond that."

Now picture our perspective leaving our own experiences, zooming out and up until we can see how all the different groups are interacting on a worldwide social network. That bird's-eye view could be both beautiful and horrible if the resolution was clear enough. That's what a Ramen-eating, ex-Apple engineer named Pete Warden is about to release to the public this week.

Google announced a new feature for its web analytics product this week that illustrates well the potential in anonymous aggregate data analysis. This siloed product announcement points to an even more exciting future if data portability dreams come true.

Google Analytics Industry Benchmarking will let users opt-in to share and have access to aggregate traffic info for websites in their industry vertical and at other points in their supply chain. (See sample screenshot below.)