If you were asked what the most popular messaging app in the world is, what would you say? Messenger? Instagram? Discord? All wrong. In fact, if you answered anything other than WhatsApp you would be wrong. WhatsApp rose quickly to become the biggest kid on the messaging block thanks to its compatibility with Android (by far the most popular smartphone platform in the world) and the fact it allows users to make free calls and texts as long as there is a wifi connection. What really sets this app apart from the rest though is that it didn’t gather or sell any of your data. Its developers prided themselves on the fact they didn’t know and didn’t want to know anything about their users.
Sadly, that started to change in 2014 when Facebook bought the company. Initially, the house that Zuck built promised that it would make no changes to the terms of service for WhatsApp. However, recently, they did change them, making it mandatory for users to share their WhatsApp data with Facebook. Users are faced with two choices, accept the new terms or lose their account. At least they are upfront about the choice. So there’s that.
One wonders though, why are they making users make this decision now? What is driving them to alter one of their primary features? To put it another way, why do they want our data now? Looking at the updated agreement, there is a hint. One of the things WhatsApp says they will be using that data for is to provide personalized ads within the app, no doubt cross-referencing data from Facebook and Instagram. To be fair, they likely realized they needed to actually make some money with WhatsApp and putting a couple of ads on the screen is an easy way to do that. However, if they go the route of Skype and other apps and start recording and transcribing calls without consent, that will be sure to cause a backlash. Not that they are doing that right now. Hopefully, they stay away from that kind of privacy violation as it would completely destroy the original vision of WhatsApp’s creators.
So why would we speculate as to their intentions? Because the new terms of service are unfortunately pretty opaque. Amongst the data they’ll be collecting now is “how we interact with others”. What does that mean? Anytime there is ambiguity like that, it invites suspicion. Wouldn’t it be better if they just came right out and said everything they plan on doing with your data? Even if people weren’t terribly likely to approve. At least if Facebook told you they were planning on selling your information to the NSA at least you could respect their honesty and have a real choice in the matter. Instead, you have a bunch of vague terminologies that would frustrate a corporate lawyer.
Let’s take another example. They’ll also be collecting users’ IP addresses, location data, and more besides. But don’t worry! “Other data” will be collected only with consent. One wonders what’s meant by “other data” or even what could be meant given how much data they already tell you that they’ll be collecting. The fact they then emphasize they won’t be asking for your name or email as a way to put users’ concerns at ease is just plain laughable. WhatsApp is telling people they are taking every bit of data necessary to figure out who you are. Who cares if you give them your name? They can figure it out, along with where you had lunch based on the data that is getting collected.
Now, it might seem like we’re bashing WhatsApp. And we are a little bit, but it’s in the hopes that they will hear the concerns of users around the world and respond in a positive way that preserves user privacy while still allowing them to make a buck and keep the lights on. Fortunately, we at TARTLE are experts on how to handle user privacy and address the concerns of users and companies alike. We would love to sit down with Facebook or any other company struggling to find the sweet spot on this issue and find solutions that will keep everyone happy.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
You know what unifies almost everyone? We all hate having to go buy a car. Unless you have so much money it doesn’t matter how much you spend, the whole thing is incredibly nerve-wracking and annoying. Sure, you can do your research on what kind of car you want and where to find it online these days, so it’s a lot easier than it was twenty years ago. Yet, at the end of the day, you’re still going to the dealership to walk around the car, check it over, and then haggle with the salesperson, trying to skim a few thousand off the price or get an extra or two thrown in. You never know for sure if he’s being honest with you on the condition of the car or how much they can afford to cut the price.
Those last points in particular demonstrate that the typical car buying experience is anything but transparent. What if it was though? What if there was a simple price that you knew was the price it was actually going to be sold at, there wasn’t any haggling to do, no salesperson, and strong guarantees on the quality of the vehicle? What if you could do it all online and have the vehicle delivered right to your driveway? In short, what if buying a car was like buying something on Amazon?
That is the experience that Carvana set out to create. Using data the right way they managed to create a user experience that allows for buying a vehicle in as little as ten minutes while actually increasing their profits. They were already doing well before COVID hit, but as soon as it did, Carvana really took off with their stock price going from $29 to $280. How did they manage to do this?
One of the big things they did was create an online shopping experience that works for everyone. By foregoing the car lot, they avoid a lot of overhead as well as having salespeople. Not having salespeople does more than just save money by having one less person to pay. It takes the subjectivity out of the equation. Other than the obvious temptation on the part of the salesperson to oversell a vehicle or steer someone to a more expensive vehicle for the larger commission, there are personality issues. If the salesperson and the buyer have incompatible personalities, there is a high likelihood that the sale doesn’t happen, even if the car is actually exactly what the buyer wants. Carvana does away with that subjectivity and keeps the focus on helping the buyer find the car that will best suit his needs.
When asked about how they use data so well, the CEO had a great, TARTLEesque answer. He said it wasn’t really about having an AI and machine learning, it was about getting the right data and doing the right things with it. That is exactly what we’ve been saying, it isn’t about the quantity of the data but the quality of it and being able to use it effectively.
It isn’t that they don’t make use of AI and machine learning, it’s that they use them very intentionally. For example, they have programs that monitor used car auctions, looking for cars that are in demand in certain areas and waiting for them to get to the right price so they can turn a profit. When that happens, Carvana gets a notification from its AI and purchases the vehicle. Then any needed restoration work is done and it is put up online and if needed, shipped to the region where it is most likely to sell.
Carvana uses their algorithms and data so effectively because they understand that they are more than a car company. They grasp that they are really a tech and data company before they are a car company. That, plus the desire to help get people in the car that they want to be in, makes Carvana one of the best and most interesting companies in the digital age.
If they can use data to revolutionize something as mundane as selling a car, imagine what can be done by millions of people all sharing their own data through TARTLE.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
One question we at TARTLE get a fair amount is why on earth we are located in New Mexico. After all, we got started in Delaware which is near a lot of creative and technology hubs. If for some reason we wanted to be somewhere else, why wouldn’t we just relocate to Silicon Valley, Texas, Denver or up and coming Nashville? Isn’t New Mexico just a massive swath of desert in the middle of more desert?
There are a lot of reasons. One is that all those other places are already saturated with tech companies. From the massive household names to a ridiculous number of startups you can’t swing a stick in those places without hitting someone working for a tech company. Out there, we would be competing with all of those companies for talent, resources, and attention. In short, we would be a small fish in a big pond. Out here, we have the chance to be the big fish, the biggest talent magnet in the area. Yet, there is also plenty of talent around. As it turns out, New Mexico has a ridiculous number of PhDs, actually the highest concentrations in the country. Yet, because it doesn’t have the reputation as a tech hub, the people aren’t very pretentious. That itself is extremely valuable as having to massage egos and defuse situations is not what we should be worried about at work.
The history of the area is also something that is both personally appealing and fits well with TARTLE’s vision. How so? It has an ancient and rich history with Native American cultures and is also the home of Los Alamos, one of the major places the first nuclear bombs were built. It is a mix of the old and the new. This reflects TARTLE in that we want to bring back a time when people had control over their own data while using the latest technology to do it.
The local culture as a whole is also fantastic. It’s one that is very laid back, very personal and very willing to engage with new ideas and new companies like ours. This creates a more flexible culture than what is found in most of the major technology centers, a culture that works very well for us here.
Another great advantage of New Mexico is that the government out here is very interested in getting new businesses into the state. While they have been an oil and gas state for a long time, they’ve realized that those resources won’t last forever and in the meantime it doesn’t hurt to have a more diverse economic base. They’ve made it easy to work with a lot of the government research facilities out here (those labs are the big reason there are so many PhDs here) which opens up a massive amount of intellectual capacity and past and current research. They’ve done a lot to make it easier to do business in New Mexico than it is in a lot of other places. Others are noticing this as well, many of the big tech companies are already planning on moving out here. TARTLE is ahead of the curve.
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the fact that practically speaking, it almost doesn’t matter where we are based out of. We are a tech company working in the digital age. Given how easy it is to work remotely now, it would be unnecessarily restrictive to limit our recruiting to whomever is available locally. And if we can work anywhere, why not live somewhere that you want to live instead of going to a big city so you can rent out a shoebox for the price you can own a house somewhere else?
So, why New Mexico? Because it is a great culture, with an amazing history and a wealth of opportunities from a business and personal perspective that fits perfectly with TARTLE’s own culture and mission. TARTLE is proud to call The Land of Enchantment home.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
Every company is a tech company now. In a way, this has always been true. Every tool is a form of technology. The first blacksmith shop was the cutting edge tech company of its day. Today, the concept of tech means something entirely different, even something different than it did ten years ago. Back then, a tech company was one that made phones and computers, things full of wires, circuit boards, and transistors. Now, it usually just refers to companies that make some sort of software or operate primarily online.
So in what sense are all modern companies tech companies? One thru line during all of these changes has been the growing importance of and ability to collect and analyze data. Once, this was considered a useful tool in marketing but little more. A business would learn who was watching what kind of shows and when and put ads in front of people who would hopefully be willing to buy them. Now, data drives everything. It is being used to determine not only the best marketing windows, but how to most efficiently lay out a restaurant, or what new product should be rolled out to appeal to an untapped demographic.
Food trends illustrate this very well. Organic foods were once a niche market, with only a few specialty stores making it a focus. However, once the major grocery stores started looking at the data showing an increasing number of people eager to spend the extra couple of shekels for food that was healthier for them and the environment, organic sections started popping up around the country. Now, the organic food is often not confined to its own grocery ghetto but distributed around the store as just another option, equal with all the others.
Chipotle is another excellent example. The millennial generation has a number of preferences that weren’t getting served. They had a greater tendency to like foreign food than previous generations, wanted something healthier than a burger, but still wanted it fast. The founders of Chipotle not only were able to read the data and see a need, the figured out how to fill it with food that is fresher and better tasting than your typical fast food, while also allowing a degree of customization of your order that no one was even coming close to at the time. They even provided a lot of vegan options to accommodate people who prefer that for moral or health reasons.
Speaking of vegans, let’s take a moment to appreciate the single strangest example of this trend – The Impossible Whopper. Burger King, having seen the success of places like Chipotle and the interest in meat substitutes started looking at the data to see if there was a niche they could plug into. Thus was born the Impossible Whopper, a plant-based burger that is completely vegan. It now shares space on the menu with Burger King’s typical fare of burgers and chicken sandwiches. While regarded by many as a flash in the pan marketing gimmick that would quickly fade away it has been surprisingly successful. It turns out there really is a market for vegans who need to quickly deal with a case of the munchies on a budget. Even outside of Colorado.
None of these successes would have been possible if grocery stores, Chipotle, and Burger King hadn’t taken on the role of a tech company and started collecting and analyzing publically available data. In doing so, they were not only able to identify market trends, they were able to see needs that weren’t being met and how best to fulfill those needs. Thanks to their solid and honest data analysis, these businesses were able to build or expand their customer base while also increasing their profits.
TARTLE aims to help take these companies to the next level. Instead of bulk data bought or collected at a premium, TARTLE is working with people all over the world to create a marketplace in which companies can get more than bulk Twitter likes. Rather, companies can go right to the data source, the individual person generating the data in the first place. With that kind of access, companies can build a better product not just for their customers, but for you.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
What's happening to consumer privacy? The public backlash against this wholesale data acquisition has started to show itself in legislation around the world. The European Union passed laws years ago meant to curb Google’s monitoring of individuals and just recently California passed Proposition 24. This new law is meant to strengthen digital privacy laws, reducing how much companies can intrude on your digital life. While the proposition certainly identifies the right problem, does it identify the right solution?
By now, it is no secret that companies of all kinds are regularly mining data, your data and doing all sorts of things with it. They use it to tailor what ads show up in your browser, what videos show up in your YouTube feed, the news stories that you see in your aggregator, their own product development, and, most notoriously, sell it to third parties for who knows what purposes. Many have been voicing their displeasure with this situation for years and finally regular people are starting to wake up to the fact that important information about them is being collected and used in ways they may or may not approve of.
The biggest indicator that Proposition 24 won’t work as planned is that Californai would be setting up a massive new agency with a $10 million annual budget. As anyone who knows anything about government is well aware, setting up a government agency is not the most efficient way to spend $10 million a year. Especially since all you really need to do is give people the opportunity to opt out of all the data collection and sharing that a given company does. All that needs to happen is there be a box for the user to check and a few lines of code to make sure that person’s data is not getting collected as it normally would. How easy is that to accomplish? It would take the software gurus at TARTLE about five hours to put together the necessary code. Five hours for a couple of people at a computer. Maybe throw in a couple bottles of kombucha to keep things moving. That’s a lot less than a state run agency with a building and dozens, if not hundreds of people working for it.
Of course, there should be some sort of enforcement, some way of making sure that companies really are opting people out. But let’s be honest, is the government really the best option here? After all, we learned years ago through the information leaked by Edward Snowden just how much information the government was collecting on people through means of, shall we say, dubious legality. Not to mention, these kinds of agencies have a tendency to grow overtime. While this agency would be a California agency at first, it would be a short period of time before other states followed suit, which would quickly morph into a federal agency. By that point, the rules and regulations concerning data would become so convoluted, they would make the convoluted terms of service we all blindly accept look like an Eric Carle children’s book. That is not a model for the future that any normal person wants to see.
What are we to do then? Well, you’ve heard the phrases “vote with your dollar” and “vote with your feet”. You can do something similar when you join TARTLE. You vote with your data. Don’t let the big companies and the government have it in the first place. You don’t have to worry so much about them honoring their opt-out protocols because we are doing it for you. Your data goes through our encryption and the only way it gets out is if you decide it should. We don’t even do anything with it without your permission.
While the stated intent behind Proposition 24 is good and something we wholeheartedly agree with at TARTLE, the legislation itself is as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said, “a mixed bag of partial steps both backwards and forwards”. Or to put it another way, good intentions do not good laws make. That is one of the real goals of TARTLE, to represent a third way. Our existence reminds people that they don’t have to choose between global conglomerates or massive governments. TARTLE reminds people that they can choose to manage things on their own, to take control of their data, and their lives.
What’s your data worth? Sign up and join the TARTLE Marketplace with this link here.
