"One day we had a conversation where we figured we could just try to predict the stock market," he told a conference in Abu Dhabi. "And then we decided it was illegal. So we stopped doing that."

But the most influential new product may be the least flashy: a $100 million database built to chart the academic paths of public school students from kindergarten through high school.

"The companies that figure out how to generate intelligence from that data will know more about us than we know ourselves, and will be able to craft techniques that push us toward where they want us to go, rather than where we would go by ourselves if left to our own devices. "

"They start by tracking how many times a specific phrase turns up, using a website that tracks memes daily-sort of an early early warning system. Their algorithm then takes that data and analyzes the connections among social and information networks and the influence members have over one another. Their approach works, Colbaugh says, because it's a blend of social science (the power people have to influence others) and computer science (the power of Big Data)."