Personal, Inc. – Page 3

The Era of Small Data Begins

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

This is the first post in a series on the rise of “small data” and the new platforms, tools and rules to empower people with their data. It was written for “The Rise of Big Data” panel at the Stanford Graduate School of Business E-Conference on March 6, 2012.

Big data is big business

More data is created every year or so than has been created in all of human history. In this always-on, always-connected world, where even things are being plugged into the Web, the amount of data is growing exponentially.

The collection, storage, analysis, use and monetization of all that data is called “big data.” Corporations and governments are hyper-focused on becoming big data experts to avoid being permanently left behind. The first movers to master the art and science of big data are already changing the way we live, while disrupting industries and amassing fortunes at speeds never before seen.

Given the stakes, massive investments are being made every year to build the technology and expertise required to succeed in big data, optimized, of course, around the needs of companies and governments, not individuals. Industry experts have likened this big data boom to the early days of “big oil,” and refer to data as the “new oil.” Just as oil was essential to building the modern industrial economy, data has become the lifeblood of the new digital economy.

Companies must learn to compete in big data regardless of their industry, or else face obsolescence. This is a tough challenge and touches all aspects of the operations, strategy and culture of companies. At the same time, opportunities abound as entirely new industries are emerging around data as they did around oil — sourcing, extracting, refining, mining, analyzing, distributing, and selling large sets of data.

Big data creates big problems

With its insatiable appetite for digital bits and bytes on each of us, big data is driving a virtual arms race to capture and exploit information about our every move. Big data will log the life of a child born in 2012 in such a way that the person’s activities will be able to be reconstructed not just by the day, but by the hour or minute. In the hands of bad actors, the potential for wrongdoing with these permanent and growing archives of our lives is real and rightfully concerning.

Yet, until recently, people had virtually no idea of big data’s existence as its tools and marketplaces remained largely hidden. The next generation of tracking and data mining technologies are being created based on the assumption that individuals do not care enough to change their online and mobile behavior, which confuses lack of interest with the current lack of alternatives.

But with privacy and security concerns now front-page news, and the financial triumphs of companies built entirely from personal data such as Facebook, Google and LinkedIn, people are waking up and starting to ask tough questions. While companies and government regulators negotiate over how to curb the most egregious risks and abuses, a new and more powerful model is emerging that is designed around the needs and interests of people, providing them a far better, more sustainable alternative to the status quo.

Enter small data

Small data puts the power and tools of big data into the hands of people. It is based on the assumption that people have a significant long-term competitive advantage over companies and governments at aggregating and curating the best and most complete set of structured, machine-readable data about themselves and their lives – the “golden copy”. With proper tools, protections and incentives, small data allows each person to become the ultimate gatekeeper and beneficiary of their own data.

Built on privacy by design and security by design principles, small data can help people become smarter, healthier, and make better, faster decisions. It can help people discover new experiences more easily, reclaim time in their busy lives, and enjoy deeper, more positive relationships with others.

Small data can also greatly improve the capacity and performance of governments and non-governmental institutions, from eliminating time-consuming forms and other inefficient data practices, to improving public health and education by leveraging the power of more accurate and complete data provided with an individual’s permission. Such institutions can also help share important data with individuals, allowing them to have a copy for their own use.

Applied to commerce, small data holds the promise of connecting people with the best and most relevant products and services in a safe and anonymous environment. It can transform advertising into a more respectful, less disruptive industry that rewards people for their time and engagement with their messages and for their purchases. Small data offers customers the opportunity to better balance and assert their interests with companies (some have called this model Vendor Relationship Management (VRM)). Companies who play by these new rules and earn the trust of individuals will be rewarded with access to rich and robust data otherwise unavailable, giving them instant competitive advantages over companies who choose to go it alone.

The first small data platform – a data vault, private network and apps

Personal has spent over two years designing, building and launching the first scalable small data platform. At its core is a secure data vault to aggregate and store structured and unstructured data from just about any source. A private, personal network sits on top to set permissions for data to enter or exit the vault. People are able to connect with other people through the network, and soon with companies, apps, and private or public institutions, and decide which, if any, of their data they are willing to grant them permission to access.

We have put equal weight on privacy and security, and on helping people leverage their own data in exciting, new ways. These concepts are inextricably linked in small data, which requires a high degree of trust to function properly. Similarly, we have rewritten the legal rules of data ownership to protect and empower users, who we call owners. And, because we know relationships can sometimes end, we have built what we believe is the most complete data portability and deletion capabilities in a data platform. Trust doesn’t work unless you are truly free to leave.

In addition to launching our own apps in the coming months, we are inviting developers to apply for early access to build apps on our platform to show off the power and benefits of small data. Individuals have never imagined the magic of running apps on reusable, structured data about the most important things in their lives, while developers have never assumed having access to such high quality data on which to innovate. The possibilities are limitless.

We are excited to help usher in this new era where permission, transparency and privacy become the norm, and where companies and governments have to align around new rules and provide clear and compelling benefits in order to earn access.

At Personal, we see the future through the lens of small data — and we think it will change everything.

What is your personal data really worth?

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

New York Times reporter Joshua Brustein provides a great introduction to the model that Personal and companies like us are developing in “Start-ups Aim to Help Users Put a Price on Their Data.” However, a central question remains unresolved: what is the true economic value of personal data?

No one knows the answer – yet – because no fair market exists for individual data. The question raises the possibility that, if it’s not very much, people are unlikely to care enough to change their behavior. We believe there are a host of non-economic reasons that people will want to proactively manage their data (time savings, greater privacy, less friction, making better, faster decisions, etc.), but the question of determining economic value is critical.

The current model is built for companies, not people

Some look for clues to the average annual revenue per user for Google and Facebook. These “free” services, whose advertising revenue is based largely on personal data, earn $24 and $4 respectively per person every year. But is $28 enough to motivate people to change their behavior and do a lot of work? Maybe not. But it is the wrong question. Properly used, we believe companies like Personal will be able to prove your data, when tied to a single purchase, can create 10-20x the value that Google or Facebook can over a year.

The current paradigm is entirely dysfunctional and inefficient from the perspective of the individual. For example, the Direct Marketing Association says over 97% of online advertising fails to reach the right person at the right time. The pennies from the 3% success rate may add up for companies exploiting data across millions of people, but it requires a number of unsustainable practices, such as the increasingly invasive and sometimes unethical tracking of people. It also requires that they co-opt your attention and time and resell that along with your data to others trying to reach you.

The emerging user-centric marketplace

What might a user-centric marketplace look like and how much economic value can a person realize in a year?

First, you need a marketplace that respects the sanctity of one’s data, time (time is money, after all), privacy and identity (anonymity is the default). The technologies, business rules, and legal and privacy protections must be created nearly from scratch to protect the individual. (Our CTO, Tarik Kurspahic, will present at SXSW on building a privacy-by-design platform).

Second, the marketplace would focus on commercially relevant data such as your brand, travel or clothing preferences, along with data about your intent to buy something (also known as purchase intent). These two types of data alone can fundamentally change data economics when combined with a controlled marketplace to reach you when and how you want to be reached.

This last point is key. We do not support the idea of people “selling” personal data. Rather, we believe such data can be used in a safe environment to connect people with companies with highly relevant products, services and even content and information. Doc Searls and others have referred to this idea as Vendor Relationship Management (VRM). Companies that play by these new rules will have the most direct and positive channel ever created to reach people, including their existing customers.

People can realize thousands of dollars per year

Finally, we believe companies that earn your business (and those who don’t) will be willing to compensate individuals for having the chance to interact with qualified buyers of their particular good or service. This far more efficient marketplace can easily add up to thousands of dollars annually as people realize the full benefit of their data, time and purchases. That should move the needle for just about anyone.

We appreciate the serious attention being focused on this emerging space by the New York Times, as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, AdAge, AdWeek, Forrester Research, MIT Tech Review, The Washington Post, TechCrunch, Mashable, the Harvard Business Review and others. It is an idea that will ignite untold innovation and benefits for each of us.

Data With Benefits: Our Open Beta Launch

This post was originally published under the same title on the Personal blog, A Personal Stand.

11.11.11

I don’t want to overplay the significance of today’s date, or the fact that our web and mobile web service went live in open beta at 11:11 am GMT and was announced on Twitter for the first time at 11:11 am EST. What matters is that after two years of hard core work on a totally new kind of platform, we’re out there.

Our Android and iPhone apps will be launched later this month. We will be promoting our launch in the coming weeks once the mobile apps are out given the importance of the full mobile experience to our personal data vault and private network products.

We also have a new web site and an updated look to our brand, thanks to our new marketing team. In case you missed it, you can read about the team, which includes former execs from Nike and AOL, and a new advisory board member from Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios, in our announcement.

We really appreciate all of the people who signed up and used Personal during our closed beta. Your engagement and feedback was awesome! Among the improvements you’ll see are:

– More ways to easily import data, including community gems created by Personal owners and partners. We are especially excited about what community gems can do to allow people to share knowledge and structured data with each other. You can read more in the gemware section on our site.

– Personal network snapshots for every contact and gem so people can quickly see who has what data in their life, and what they’ve received from others. This is like your personal data graph, so you can quickly and easily see all of your data relationships in life.

– Our “Form Killer” app to instantly fill out forms online and off. This is the first true app built on top of our platform, and we think it can be huge. Imagine not having to fill out any more forms. Our developer program will be launched soon and more apps are on the way.

– Identity management gems to help people control how others know them in Personal and elsewhere. We are excited about being a leader in this growing area.

We really liked this article in AdAge Digital yesterday called “Personal Data is the New Oil.” It’s not surprising that those in the advertising world are among the first to get how disruptive – and ultimately beneficial – Personal and companies that believe in a people-centric data model can be to creating win-win outcomes for commerce and advertising.

We can’t wait to hear what you think about the new product! Tell us at feedback@personal.com.

Shane & the entire Personal team

Washington, DC & Sarajevo

Personal Closed Beta

Personal is sending out the next round of invitations for our closed beta. Making it easy, fun, safe and beneficial to own and manage your data is an ambitious goal, and we will only get there with your help.

If you have signed up and receive an invitation (we are working our way through the 10,000+ on our list), we hope you will register and take a good look at what we are doing and share your candid and constructive feedback.

To see how the product works before registering, check out our video on the front page of www.personal.com.

Our closed beta starts with the most foundational level of functionality – aggregating and organizing the data about your life in a data vault, easily retrieving that data from any computer or device, and granting permission to people you trust. Think of it as your own private data network designed to help you maximize the efficiencies and benefits of your data.

As you explore the product, we would love to hear specifically about:

Your Experience –Were you able to add gems, data and contacts and grant access? Were you able to do what you wanted to do in the system? What can we improve?

Gems – Which gems did you find the most useful and why? Which gems were less useful and how could they be made better? What new gems would you like to see?

Utility – How useful is Personal? On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to use it in your daily life and recommend to others? (1 – not at all; 5 – loved it and want to help launch the revolution)

Of course, entirely new ideas are more than welcome.

Please send your feedback to feedback@personal.com or feel free to post comments here.

Personal Receives pii2011 Innovator Spotlight Audience Choice Award

When you spend almost two years working on something, and you show it for the first time to a room full of 250 experts, you start to reconnect with long-forgotten anxieties from, say, your first day at a new school. And when the internet connection for the live demo fails, albeit momentarily, you are right back on your first date trying to remember even the most basic details about your life.

Thankfully, Personal’s debut at pii2011, the Privacy Identity Innovation conference, was well received by a patient and supportive audience, who selected us and PassTouch (a super cool visual touchscreen login app) for the Innovator Spotlight Audience Choice Award. Given all of the thoughtful people and companies in the room working on this historical shift towards a user-centric data ecosystem, we are thrilled to get this recognition.

I have a lot of competing reflections from the conference. At times I have complete confidence that the company-centric data ownership model will change quickly now that public awareness is growing so fast and real alternatives are emerging. But I also appreciate how hard it will be to align all of the good intent from so many different players, some of whom are still thinking too incrementally, while the current model continues to accelerate wildly (I couldn’t help but notice LinkedIn’s meteoric IPO updates while listening to the speakers).

Finally, please check out Personal’s new web site and videos at www.personal.com to let me know what you think. We spent a lot of time and effort trying to make our product and vision accessible to people who are not experts. They are the ones who have to buy in to this model for it to ever have a chance of succeeding.

Data Gems and the Value of Data

Data gems It’s been a while since I’ve had time to write – at least thoughtfully. We have been heads down since the beginning of the year finishing our user-centric data platform, data vault and permission-based data sharing service, and are excited to start moving into our next closed beta release shortly.

One of the biggest challenges with a product and model as different as ours – where individuals aggregate, own and use their personal data for their benefit – is demonstrating the real world value of such data and making it easy to manage in large amounts across one’s life. We developed the concept of a “data gem” to help make abstract, “lifeless” data more tangible and real, and to highlight its literal and figurative value (and where else would you store your gems but a vault!).

A data gem is discrete set of reusable, modular data that addresses some kind of activity, thing, issue or need. The three examples in the image are a Wi-Fi gem, which contains information about my router and how to access my Wi-Fi network, an Air Travel Preferences gem, which contains information about how I like to fly, and a Car Insurance gem, which effectively replaces the print or PDF car insurance policies locked away in my filing cabinet or my hard drive with actionable, structured data. Some gems are for organizing information in your life, while others are designed for sharing, and yet others for commercial activities.

The bright orange circle is Personal’s particular take on how a data gem might look, but the concept goes beyond our implementation. As we developed them, you can enter or import data once and have it populate the same fields across multiple gems. They are also designed to be modular so they can be easily combined when shared with others. For example, a babysitter could easily be granted access to related gems on the kids, the home, the television, and emergency contacts. The granularity of gems also allows a high degree of control over how much information is shared with others without creating burdensome user controls.

We have created about 100 gems so far, and are starting to engage others to define new gems and standards for making them as interoperable as possible. I would enjoy hearing your thoughts. S.

Personal Series A Financing

Personal (www.personal.com) just posted an announcement on our Series A financing round, which was led by Grotech Ventures and Steve Cases’s Revolution LLC, and joined by Allen & Company, Eric Semler of TCS Capital Management, and other angel investors we have known from our days at The Map Network. You can read the announcement at: http://www.personal.com/news

Raising money is never easy, especially for a big, disruptive idea. Making sure those investors truly believe in your idea — and have the passion and commitment to help you see it through — adds even more of a challenge. I think we found exactly the right financial partners, partners who welcome, rather than fear, the challenge of turning the current model upside down and doing right by consumers. I hope people will look back in a few years and have a hard time believing the idea of companies owning and controlling our data was ever seriously considered a viable model.

We had some truly amazing meetings during our fund raising process, including many who flat out opposed our vision or else thought the horses were already out of the barn on privacy and consumers controlling their data (some even had a hand in opening the barn doors). We also heard from a number of investors and senior executives who found the task of changing the current system daunting, but who readily acknowledged that our vision was generally how the world should work. We look forward to helping them be part of the solution.

Owners, not Consumers or Users

Consumer — an individual who consumes something made by someone else, usually with some kind of direct and clear payment. The most common name used by companies to refer to individuals.

User — an individual who uses something made by someone else, usually with some kind of payment, although not frequently direct or clear. The most common name used by web and mobile companies to refer to individuals.

I’d like to propose a new word for the new media lexicon: Owners. Companies are very clear on who their “owners” are, and they go to work to pursue their interests every day. When it comes to our data and time, we should start thinking of ourselves as a little enterprise organized for the express benefit of ourselves. We have tools never before imaginable to build a far more favorable model for ourselves.

But what do we, as enterprises, do?

What product do we make? What service do we provide?

What marketplace are we in? What forms of payment do we accept?

How do we calculate our bottom line?

In the multi-hundred billion dollar industries funded by advertising, the first answer is quite simple: we make data. Data has become a new form of currency in the connected world (joining money and time), and we, as individuals, have an unfair advantage in creating, aggregating and owning the best data about ourselves as Owners.

We also provide the critical service of our time and attention and deciding to whom to give this finite resource. Our marketplace is one where we allow others we trust, companies or individuals, to find us or know us better through our data and to eliminate huge inefficiencies and costs in our lives — and theirs. This marketplace applies to any industry that uses data today — advertising, media, entertainment, retail, health, travel, etc. As payment, we accept cash, discounts, special personalized offers, time savings, mind blowing relevance and discovery, improved safety and security, and guarantees of privacy.

Our bottom line is the most interesting of all to consider. Given the many forms of payment, each of us can choose which of these benefits to emphasize. And unlike most businesses, we can decide on a case by case basis which is most important. Sometimes I might like to maximize my economic benefits (like most traditional companies), but at others, mind blowing relevance and discovery may be most important (such as my upcoming vacation with my family). In a rush, convenience and time savings are probably most important. None of the forms of payment are mutually exclusive, but trade offs will need to be made for the good of our enterprise — just as any great manager has to do.

I hope you will consider using Owner when referring to yourself in the context of using services that require your data or time. Names matter.

Early Concerns about Being Defined by Others (1992)

I would probably be too embarrassed to mention my graduation speech at the University of Michigan in May 1992 had it been a glorious success. As it were, gathering storm clouds over Michigan Stadium forced school officials to rearrange the program, pushing commencement speaker Carole Simpson of ABC News and other dignitaries in front of my speech. In addition to being the opening band trying to follow the main act, I was further thrown off when the wind blew off my my graduation cap as I was about to stand up, putting an exclamation point on the fact that we were all soon to get soaked. I rushed through the speech amid cat calls and growing restlessness. I remember my international affairs professor, Raymond Tanter, telling me later that I had a hard lesson in the fact that timing is everything. Yes indeed.

I only recently realized how much the speech suggested themes of Personal after digging it out of a box in my basement. I was outraged at the time that the label “Generation X” had been so successfully tagged to us by the media and others. At best, we were “materialistic and apathetic”, as I wrote; at worst, we had no name whatsoever. The speech was titled “On Defining a Generation”, and was a call to arms to my peers to take control of their identities and not let others define them individually or as a group. Here are a few excerpts that are eerily relevant to how I believe we are being represented by others who capture our data and define us by it, as well as the value of your intent data (your future behavior) vs. your historical data:

“…Until now, we have been shaped and defined by our parents, our schools, and the media. Today, it is our time to bring together where we have been with where we want to go, and in so doing, to define ourselves.

“…It is a dangerous thing to let others tell you who you are. No one can understand the complexities that make up the mind and soul of another individual. Such attempts to define a person usually fall short; they limit rather than capture essence…Do such attempts to simplify our diverse character affect us?

“…These diverse experiences are all part of our generation, and they show the impossibility of arriving at singular conclusions about our character. We should not attempt to stereotype ourselves, rather, we must reflect on these shared experiences and begin to understand and thoughtfully define our generation.

“…[I]dentity is not simply a composite of the past. We can be identified as much by where we are going as where we have been. This may be the more important task in this process, because it is the part over which you and I have control. What problems are we committed to solving? Are there goals and ideals that the majority of us share that give us distinction from other generations? Or maybe the discipline, will power, and most importantly, the tolerance, to accomplish our goals is what will set us apart.

“I encourage you to be active and thoughtful in defining our generation. Because if we do not define ourselves, experience has shown us that someone else will.”

I was obviously referring to the traditional “media” at the time, and not Google, Facebook or any of the data and technology-driven media companies of today who are defining us digitally by capturing all that we do on their sites and others. Little did I know that one of the co-founders of Google, Larry Page, was just behind me at Michigan and was soon to envision one of the greatest data collection and organization tools in human history, or that the quality of our lives would be increasingly shaped by our identities and reputations in the online world.

In his far happier commencement speech at Michigan in 2009 (as the main act, not the student warm up band), Page shared one of his favorite quotes, which I had not heard but really like: “Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting.” Amen.

I think this would qualify by his definition: Help people understand how incredibly limiting and inefficient it is to be defined by companies using data they surreptitiously capture about us, and instead provide individuals with the understanding, tools, transparency and incentives to take control and do it themselves.

A New Model Requires New Principles

The first week my team and I started Personal, it was clear to us that we had to have a statement of principles that we would live by internally and be held accountable to by the rest of the world. I don’t mean the mandatory “company values” statement. I mean a fundamentally new set of principles that would govern our every decision; principles based on the conviction that each individual must have the ultimate control, flexibility and benefit of his or her data.

After a thorough review of many good (and not so good) ideas, we agreed on the following:

– Right to data ownership, privacy and economic benefits by individuals
– Transparency in all collection and use of personal data
– Data portability and deletion rights
– Right to simple opt-in and opt-out mechanisms

In the coming weeks, I will explore each of these more deeply and offer early insights into how Personal has built such principles into our products, business model and company culture.

But I want to first share the fact that data portability and deletion rights was especially perplexing when we first debated it. How could we spend all this time investing our time and resources to build such a great platform and innovative business model and just allow people to decide to take their data elsewhere and delete all traces of it on our system?

The answer was simple – we couldn’t find a single compelling argument not to do it. We are building Personal for ourselves and our families and friends as much as anyone, and we all agreed that we would want to be able to pick up and leave if we lost faith in the company for any reason without penalty or friction. Yes, that means, in some ways, we will only be as good as our last pitch, but that is how we believe it should be when it comes to data. Anyone for having your money trapped in a bank you have lost confidence in? Or if you find another bank with far better rates and services? We welcome having to meet such a high standard.