Meet The Foundry For Builders Company That Wants To Pay You For Your Data

mePrism is a Foundry For Builders company. This means as a startup, Palantir chose them to use the Palantir Foundry Platform to build their business on top of, signaling that Palantir sees potential in their idea and product to one day scale.

When I first learned about mePrism, I was amazed at the problem they were trying to solve and their approach to it. If you are reading this article, you likely understand how valuable data is and will be in the coming decade.

Every company and organization is using data to make better decisions to save time, money, and energy in their day to day operations.

However, one form of data is a bit more complex to deal with.

Consumer Data Doesn't Pay Consumer For Their Data?

If you use any social app, you probably know that the app is moneitizing your searches, clicks, viewing history, and more in order to sell and target better advertising.

I personally do not think this is a bad thing. The service is free, it provides immense value to me, and if I find new products that are actually relevant to me because of it - then so be it.

However, a growing movement is starting around consumer data that is arguing for payment of data to not only go to companies that benefit off ads, but rather users who engage in actions on the platforms themselves to generate the same data.

This is where mePrism comes in.

From their CEO:

"Today’s online economy has brought amazing almost magical technology to the world that make our lives easier. We are more productive, better connected to one another and better able to access all sorts of information. This new economy is powered through non-stop measuring and recording of each and every one of us. These measurements include where we are, what we read, how we feel, who we spend time with, what we buy, and on and on. This data is your own property. The record of this data should only reside on your own storage device.

me​Prism hopes to collect all of this data about you from the many corners of the internet. me​Prism will organize that data and place it in your mePrism Data Bank account. We want to show you what it is, how it can be used, and help you maintain that record. We want to translate this data into information that you can understand and use or even delete. This data is for you alone. If companies need your data to make their products work for you, they can pay you for your consent through our marketplace. Companies that bid for your data are required to explain how they will use it so that you can decide for yourself if that is what’s best for you and your family’s privacy. You control your data. You know who is using it, why and exactly how they are using it."

They Believe Companies Should Pay For Targeting Data

As per the picture below from their website, they outline that larger tech companies are simply getting away with monetizing users at scale.

mePrism's goal is to allow consumers to connect their social accounts to their platform and then, "Once you've secured your data, you'll receive bids from companies in the marketplace. If you accept a bid, you get paid directly by that company." (from their website.)

They do this by allowing users to "desposit" personal data into their mePrism accounts. Once the accounts have the data, users can now be more educated about the data, actually stop companies from selling it, and receive bids from companies looking to use it. They can then decide to sell their data or block companies from using it.

It's An Interesting Concept

Personally, I don't know how much consumers truly care about their data being sold to companies without them benefiting from it.

You could argue that people who build a large following on social media actually need companies to get massive amounts of data at scale in order to fuel the recommendation algorithms to actually allow those creators to find an audience for their content.

If everyone started blocking their data or putting it into some bank where companies have to bid for it, it may upend the entire business model of large tech companies.

However, that could happen if enough consumers wanted a product similar to mePrism. If enough people felt they didn't want platforms to use their data or have access to it without benefiting from it at scale, then mePrism could benefit from millions of users now using their product as an official data bank.

mePrism actually wants to pay people for their data, so the incentive is there. The question is if enough people actually care about getting paid for their data vs. just using a service - only time will tell.

Thanks for reading the article. If you'd like to get in contact, please @ me on twitter here or email me at amit@dailypalantir.com.