The Myth of Big Numbers

In the digital world, it’s common to see companies — especially intermediaries or resale platforms — promoting massive figures about their activity: millions of searches, petabytes of stored data, thousands of processed transactions. At first glance, these numbers might seem impressive, but do they actually mean anything?

Big Numbers Don’t Equal Value. Saying that a platform handles “millions of searches” per day sounds impressive, but it doesn’t tell us anything about the quality or effectiveness of those searches. How many lead to a purchase or a satisfying user experience? How many are just people not finding what they need?

The same goes for stored data. Having “petabytes of information” doesn’t mean innovation or business intelligence — it just means the company is storing a lot of data. The real question is: Are they doing anything useful with it?

Many companies use these metrics as a marketing strategy to inflate their importance without demonstrating real impact. They focus on showing volume rather than value. But what really matters is how that data or those interactions improve the user experience or create effective solutions.

If a company simply buys and resells products with a margin without adding innovation or real value, boasting about the number of transactions they handle doesn’t change the fact that their business model is pure intermediation. Instead of focusing on empty metrics, they should aim to offer something truly meaningful.

In the digital world, we shouldn’t be impressed by big numbers without context. The key isn’t how much data you have or how many searches you process, but how those numbers translate into real improvements for users.

Next time you see a company bragging about massive figures, ask yourself the key question: How does this actually benefit the user?

Francisco Cobos

🐢 “Poc a Poc” (Little by Little)