Social media is an online place where people tell their stories. "We call them NARBS, short for narrative bits," said Kraft. Insurers can take advantage of this information by setting up what Kraft described as listening posts.

Once you've posted a profile picture or a status update, there's a good chance it will continue to exist in "the cloud," the millions of computing nodes that make up the Internet.

Somewhat whimsically, Mitra calls these digital morsels "narbs," for narrative bits.

There has been an exponential growth in the number of people who use digital social networking tools to stay connected with friends and family. The connections are built and sustained through numerous digital "posts" that include simple "status updates" to elaborate videos and pictures that are made available through these tools. This paper argues that every such digital imprint is indeed a small narrative bit (narb) that tells a tiny story about an individual. Here a systematic approach is provided to categorize the narbs and explore the implications of creating a digital presence through numerous narbs distributed in different parts of the Internet.