I won't argue about a particular phrase, as 1) buzz-words more often mis-used than used properly 2) there is no single, strict definition of it.
But going from ~MBs to ~GBs change methodology (of course, it's more about number of items and their structure than sheer size). Even at this scale there is some tradeoff of quality/quantity. And feasibility of using some more complex algorithms.
Data cleaning - sure, for all data. But when volume is in MB, it is still possible to open it it a text editor and manually look into abnormalities. Once it's GBs some artifacts will remain undetected.
The fact remains that nothing that can be analyzed on a single computer in a single threaded application in a single memory space is anything like "big data", unless you just want to tap into the trend of buzzword-laden link bait inbound marketing.
But going from ~MBs to ~GBs change methodology (of course, it's more about number of items and their structure than sheer size). Even at this scale there is some tradeoff of quality/quantity. And feasibility of using some more complex algorithms.
Data cleaning - sure, for all data. But when volume is in MB, it is still possible to open it it a text editor and manually look into abnormalities. Once it's GBs some artifacts will remain undetected.