Global data created per year

As global data creation has exploded, Alibaba's Singles Day sales have grown with near-perfect correspondence, a correlation of 0.993 that is almost tautological: the shopping event itself generates enormous quantities of data (transaction records, browsing history, marketing analytics), and the data infrastructure enables the shopping event. They are measuring each other from different angles, like two mirrors in a fitting room.

Global data creation grew from about 15 to over 90 zettabytes between 2015 and 2021. Singles Day sales grew from about 14 billion to over 85 billion dollars. Seven data points of two exponentially growing metrics driven by the same digital infrastructure will always correlate highly. The connection is less spurious than most: Singles Day generates petabytes of transaction data, and the cloud infrastructure that processes that data is counted in the global data creation total. Both metrics are measuring the output of the same digital economy.

Seven years of global data and Singles Day is a correlation where the two variables are genuinely intertwined: the shopping generates the data, and the data enables the shopping. The zettabytes include the transactions, the transactions generate the zettabytes, and the correlation between them is almost honest. The deals are live, the servers are full, and the relationship is closer to real than this website usually allows.