As you've intimated, most people have a very superficial mental model. Facebook == respected tech brand == someone I should copy. The end. Guy I know uses Cas

As you've intimated, most people have a very superficial mental model. Facebook == respected tech brand == someone I should copy. The end. Guy I know uses Cassandra == developed by hot tech brand Facebook == cool by mental association with Facebook. Guy I know uses MSSQL or Oracle == developed by crusty old Evil Empire Company that cool people don't want to work for == bad. Conclusion: We must use "big data" so we can be like the cool people -- err, because we really have some big data. This doesn't sound like the outcome we'd expect from technical people making these decisions, but we can obviously see that it's what we're getting.