Today, over 5 billion people own mobile phones, 2 billion people are on the Internet, an individual spends more than 3 hours online, and over 400 messages are sent millions of tweets per day. On Facebook, 2.5 billion pieces of content are shared, 2.7 billion "likes"; 300 million photos are uploaded. Facebook is the largest community in the world serving over a billion users. Social media stores enormous amounts of data, from terabytes to zettabytes, never before analyzed data that contains crucial information that cannot be ignored. However, approximately 90% of the data acquired is “unstructured”, that is, generated spontaneously and not easily acquired and classified. The graph below shows the voluminous increase in unstructured data from 2010 to 2015. (Ref 1) Characteristics of Big Data in Social Media: The characteristics of this unstructured data are high in volume, high velocity, or high variety and complexity. Big Data comes from sensors, devices, video/audio, networks, log files, transactional applications, the web and social media, most of it generated in real time and at large scale. Reasons to Explore Big Data with Social Media Analytics1. Social media analytics and volume. Social media provides a huge volume of data. There is a high rate of streaming of unstructured data and an increase in data collected from sensors and machine to machine. Proper use of social media analytics could help create meaningful meaning with relevant data.2. Social media analytics and speed. Data from social media is transmitted at an exceptional speed that needs to be managed properly, and many organizations face a major challenge with this high-speed data. Analysis and variety of social media. Data in social media comes in all kinds of formats. Struc...... middle of paper ......olIBM has a “Social Media Analytics” tool to find out customer needs and feelings, to gain a better understanding of the market. It also helps in understanding new market trends and patterns, which is beneficial for a company's product development team. The tool also helps you reach potential customers through: • Collection: Capture consumer data from social media to understand attitudes, opinions and trends, and what type of product is the customer actually looking for? • Process: Predicts customer behavior and aims to improve customer satisfaction by anticipating customer needs and recommending the best next actions.• Improve: Creates personalized advertising, campaigns and promotions that increase the number of social media participants.• Identify also the main influencers within a specific social network and addresses them with unique offers. (Ref 7)