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David Batstone

Right Reality:
Selling Out Your Rolodex

by David Batstone

How private do you expect your personal contact information to be?

Consider the following scenario: A mutual friend tells us that we should get together for lunch because we share an interest in, say, corporate training. We have a great conversation, and at the end of lunch exchange business cards with the plans to stay in touch. I return to my office and immediately sell your contact information to a Website that gets combed over by sales and marketing professionals. Do you feel betrayed?

One of my favorite business writers over at the San Francisco Chronicle, Dan Fost, called me last week to get my take on the company that rewards people to do that very thing. You can read his more exhaustive story at sfgate.com. But here's the short take.

Jigsaw Data Corp is an online marketplace where individuals can obtain fresh and accurate business contact information. Members of Jigsaw are invited to provide business contacts, and then Jigsaw assembles them for the benefit of its community.

To become a member people have two choices: Pay $25 a month or add 25 contacts per month. Adding contacts, correcting their information, or referring to others gives you points that later you can use to purchase any contacts from Jigsaw's database. Members also have the option of selling the points for money.

Jigsaw's goal is to map every business organization on the planet, contact by contact, and keep them current through a collaborative effort. They claim that its resulting database will help business people perform their jobs more efficiently and strategically. Jigsaw currently has 105,000 members, and only 131 of them sell points. Almost all trade data to get data.

I sure don't want to collaborate with a person that betrayed somebody else to get my information. Moreover, if someone takes data off one of my business cards or from the signature attached to an e-mail I send - two common methods that Jigsaw encourages - then I would feel like there had been a real violation of trust.

Even though Jigsaw stands on weak ethical ground, the company is thriving and raking in investment dollars. It has received $18 million from venture capital firms El Dorado Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners and Austin Ventures; has a database of 3 million contacts at 150,000 companies; and the company expects to grow to 5 million contacts by the end of the year. This interest in Jigsaw has a lot to do with the fact that the market for business information totals $3.5 billion - according to Outsell Inc. a Burlingame research firm that analyzes the industry.

The activities that Jigsaw encourages to its constituency makes me question if the trust that we expect from one another is an implicit agreement or fictional. Call it courtesy or unspoken rules, but not every relationship exchange should require a written contract.

Jigsaw claims that individuals should have no expectation of privacy when it comes to their business cards. But why not? If I want to be contacted to do business, then I will put my own information on a Website. I also reserve the right to give my business card to those whom I choose.

I do not even view Jigsaw as a great business tool. Maybe it's more accurate to say that it has potential for those individuals who do not have good connections. It's a nightmare for senior managers of big companies. For instance, I can imagine anti-globalization activists could make very good use of the site.

If I decide to give an individual my contact data, it's not the same thing as broadcasting it to the entire world. In a Jigsaw world, we are going to start putting a copyright or a privacy statement on our business cards: "I explicitly copyright this information." We very well may head in that direction soon.

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Would you feel betrayed if I sold your contact data to Jigsaw? Is your business card proprietary data? Share your opinion at the RightReality blog.

the WAG

September 14, 2006

Sound Byte:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. And inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

- Groucho Marx

The New Breed of MBA

By Paulette Thomas

For a few years after college, Lauren McLaughlin threw herself into changing the world, living in a lice-infested orphanage in Ecuador, counseling runaways and teenagers in juvenile detention in San Francisco. It was nonstop, but gratifying, work. "I didn't sleep for four years," she says.

Then like most young people, she took a break to consider her future. Off she went to get her MBA from Babson College.

The sudden interest in commerce shocked her friends and family. What was she, of all people, doing in pursuit of a master's degree in business administration? "All my friends said, 'You've gone to the other side,'" she recalls.

They misunderstood. For many people, an MBA is still a requisite for a fast-track, high-salary career, often in finance or consulting. But young activists today recognize that cold, gritty business expertise - knowledge of profit-and-loss statements, balance sheets and financing strategies - can give their efforts greater impact.

...Schools are responding in droves: More of the top-ranked MBA programs in the country are offering special classes, programs and business plan competitions for students who plan to launch socially responsible businesses.

Read the entire article at Worthwhile magazine.

Data Point: What Does the C-Suite Think of Corporate Blogging?

A new report suggests the C-suite has little time for blogging. The Makovsky 2006 State of Corporate Blogging Survey polled 150 senior executives from the Fortune 1000, but found relatively few were ready to embrace corporate blogs for communications purposes. The survey uncovered that:

  • Only 5% of those polled were convinced to "a great extent" that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a communications medium.
  • Only 3% saw it as a tool for brand-building technique and less than 1% were convinced of its ability to generate sales or leads.
  • Only 15% of the respondents stated someone on staff is currently writing a blog related to the company and/or its activities.

Firms admit paying bribes in World Bank program

A "healthy" number of companies have admitted paying bribes under a new World Bank Voluntary Disclosure program, which encourages firms that have worked on bank-funded projects to report corruption or fraud.

Read the entire article at Reuters.


The Tail WAGs: Reader Feedback

In response to the last issue of the WAG, "Migrating Non-Profits to Self-Sufficiency," Amy Schwab writes:

"The fallacy that those served by not-for-profits cannot be better served by a for-profit is, in my experience, a result of a misunderstanding the real meaning of profit. By focusing on the real value that an enterprise is providing to individual constituents and the society as a whole, and focusing on creating a real value exchange of some type, it taps into a deep vein of capability that otherwise falls further victim to being helped. By respecting and valuing those being helped, those helped find better ways to value and help themselves. Profit is not 'just' about money - it does, however, find it's physical expression in dollars and sense."

Read more comments...and add your own opinion...at the Right Reality blog.

Funny Bizness: How to Work for an Idiot

Very funny advice from Forbes magazine on how to deal with a garden variety of less-than-stellar bosses.

Click here.

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