Invisibly – Purchasing Personal Data

The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.

They say that online businesses earn off user data and it is seemingly unfair. The fact that John likes beer is his secret and he must be the one to earn off it and not Google or Tiktok. It seems like the next question with such an approach will be – ‘why should Guinness and Carlsberg earn off John?’ He’s the one who drinks beer, not them. Nevertheless, there is public demand to fix the situation, lawmakers draw up laws, and startup entrepreneurs launch products.

Invisibly, the American startup of the day, would like to purchase data from users for money, but even investors wouldn’t give it this much money, and it came up with a slightly more complex scheme. In its app, the person answers questions about themselves and receives points for it. And then they spend these points on reading news in the media that are hidden behind a paywall in real life.

The user saves 10 dollars per month and reads Tribune for free for twenty extra clicks – seems not bad. Here’s how the startup advertises it to partner media: ‘at least you get a few pennies from us, and those poor folks who we catch – wouldn’t pay you anything ever.’ For advertisers, it must be ‘information about premium audience interested in reading premium press.’

Anyway, it is still rather theory than practice. The invisibly app has next to zero downloads, and it guarantees non-disclosure of data to third parties so far, the system runs idle. At that, Invisibly brought in as much as USD 20M of investment in 2019 – they could have done more for such money in such time.

https://invisibly.com/

#usa #rounda #content #personaldata