ON JIGSAW ACCELERATING THE STATUS QUO

GO WITH THE FLOW?

Mike Arrington of TechCrunch is upset about a new start-up Jigsaw, that in effect is creating a marketplace for people's business card information.  As he explains:

"Well, just as soon as one company stopped being evil, another one has stepped in to take its place. Jigsaw is a marketplace for contact information, and it is very efficient.  (Author's note:  The other company Michael is referring to is Plaxo, which is the grand-daddy of contact info companies, but works very differently).

It boasts detailed personal contact information for 2.5 million people, and 7,000 new people are added every day. If you want the name, title, email address, direct phone line and/or address of any executive of any company, there is a very good chance Jigsaw will already have it in its database and will sell it to you."

Where Michael gets upset is here:

"Unlike competitors like Hoovers and InfoUSA, which gather company information by semi-legitimate means such as scouring SEC filings, cold calling companies and asking for information, and reviewing other public documents, Jigsaw simply pays people to upload other people’s contact information. Users are paid $1 for every contact they upload, and some users have uploaded information on tens of thousands of people. See the demo (and note the other demos on that page as well). Jigsaw is also self correcting, and incentivizes people to also correct bad contact information.

That’s right, the next time you hand out a business card to someone or otherwise divulge your contact information, you may be handing it out to the entire world."

While at first glance I start to get riled up against Jigsaw reading Michael's post, I tend to calm down upon further reflection.  Why? 

Well, as Michael himself explains above, there is a whole industry focused on garnering business contact information through a wide range of means and selling it both electronically and in printed directories.  In fact, they've been doing this for decades.  And charging an arm and a leg.

It's the bane of salespeoples' existence in many an industry.

What Jigsaw seems to do is accelerate the process of collecting and updating the information, and making it a lot less expensive if not free.  In that context, Jigsaw is collapsing yet another off-line business model much in the way Craig's list has collapsed the paid-classifieds business.

It's taking Plaxo and Linkedin to the next level (and yes I know, Linkedin the "least evil" here in how they operate).

At least Jigsaw doesn't focus on home addresses and contact info, yet.  And if and when they do, they'll be accelerating yet another off-line industry that has been buying and selling home addresses and contact info on hundreds of millions of consumers for decades.

In fact, taking a step back, it just seems that companies like Jigsaw are simply bringing the "efficiency" of the internet (both good and bad), to the direct marketing industry.

As Scott McNealy pithily said a while ago about the loss of privacy in the internet era, "Just get used to it".  You may think I'm being fatalistic, but I choose to look at the glass half full here.

Comments

[Michael Arrington]

Hi Michael,

A thoughtful a well reasoned post, as usual.

I have only one counterpoint - just because Jigsaw is more efficient doesn't mean it isn't a bad thing. The Internet is a wonderfully efficient machine for distributing pornography, too (including child pornography), but no one would argue that it's a good thing (at least, the child pornograhy part).

I do understand that people will create companies like this as long as its legal. I'd like to see our elected representatives do something to protect us, and at least some of our personal information.

Mike

[Pete Cashmore]

I agree with Mike Arrington on this one, although I didn't want to get involved in the flaming over on TC, so I'll leave my thoughts here.

As always, I respect your well-reasoned argument, Michael. However, just because there are already plenty of organisations selling my contact information, that doesn't mean it's acceptable. It isn't acceptable to send me junk mail and spam, and it isn't acceptable to make unsolicited phone calls. Admittedly this is just business contact information right now, but as you point out, the sale of home addresses will be next.

[Charles]

Did Mike Arrington just try to compare Jigsaw to child pornography?

Mike - when you start to think you went overboard with one of your blogs, either admit it, or stay silent, but this response was absurd.

When you hand out over a thousand business cards a year, do you really think of that as personal information (by the way, unless you own your own company, the busines card is not actually "yours" to begin with)?

[Ponzi]

Hey Charles, got a great "business card" database here with me. About 3,000,000 of my closest business contacts. Would you like to use it for mailing list purposes? I'll put it on Jigsaw for you and everyone else.

[peter hewkuns]

As someone who works in the b2b, name selling business, I do not think the jigsaw model will work. By the way, per their counter, they seem to be adding between 7-10000 contacts per day like clockwork. Seems like someone is making sure that is metered out. Their company coverage seems to me to be on major companies mostly. BIG DEAL. The thousands of managers still don't make decisions. On the client side in the name business clients want the top decision makers only. Regional management personnel have a way lesser importance. I expect they will be sued one day from other major list companies. I agree they are playing with fire with fancy legal talk and will have their day in court.