To accept credit cards through Square, a merchant must agree that the data sent to Square becomes the property of Square, and Square retains the right to use the data as it wishes, including the ability to sell the data.

One little-noticed event that took place recently was Twitter’s purchase of Gnip, a social data analytics firm. Twitter and Gnip have partnered since 2010, and Gnip was the first company authorized to sell Twitter's data.

Maybe Twitter is a logical suitor for Square. The combination of knowing where you had breakfast this morning, what you had and what you tweeted can be quite valuable to advertisers. It’s quite possible that data analytics is the future of not only our industry, but many others as well.

North Carolina State University’s Institute of Advanced Analytics offers a Master of Science degree in Analytics, and recently found that the 75 students graduating from their 2014 class received a total of 246 job offers from 55 employers. Starting salaries and bonuses offered to these graduates totaled $22.5 million, a full 24% higher than the previous year's combined offers.

Maybe we're in the wrong business!