The problem is one most people don't know they have, unfortunately. Google only lets you talk about crude keywords to find prebuilt data. If WA lives up to the hype, you should be able to formulate a hypothesis involving arbitrary supported datasets and have WA build you data tables and visualizations.

Will most people realize the sorts of questions they can ask? Probably not. Do most SQL datasets get used to their fullest potential? Probably not. Imagine what it does for the curious student, journalist, or professional, though.

Some things I'd like to see:

1. Percentage of population in African countries with HIV/AIDS over time. Regional, or demographically coded information would be interesting as well. I'd also like it sourced. I could go look this up somewhere... or I could just ask WA.

2. Fertility vs. per capita GDP for countries/regions in the world.

This is not to mention all the historical event, chemical, physical, etc. data.

Imagine NYT data visualizations built on WA data. Private data sets that people slice and dice with WA and then sell specific visualizations, etc.

It's a problem we don't know we have. Success will critically depend on flexibility, ease of use, and accurate and broad data sets.