Tasty Data Goodies

Data Privacy Day

 

January 28 is Data Privacy Day in North America. The International Association of Privacy Professionals tells us what's it all about:

From shredding events to academic conferences on topics including national security and data transfers, social networking and information security, Privacy Day offers many opportunities to elevate consciousness of data privacy issues and encourage others to take action to protect their personal information.

The IAPP is encouraging organizations to give presentations to educate other about data privacy. Microsoft is hosting such an event at the San Francisco Public Library tonight, beginning at 4:30 PM. Or you can download videos and educational materials online here.

History of the Internet

It's amazing to think about how far the Internet has come in the last 5 years. From Google to Youtube, today we can do things once imagined impossible. Since its invention, the Internet has grown exponentially and millions of people around the world surf the web every day.

But, how did it all start? This video, using Picol icons, documents the history of the Internet from time-sharing to file-sharing, Arpanet to Internet. The eye-pleasing graphics are very straightforward, making some of the difficult concepts easier to understand. Plus, how could you not love the narrator's accent?

Music and Visualizations

I like music and I like pretty visualizations.  One of the most beautiful data visualizations I've seen is the steam graph, which is similar to a stacked graph .  The best example of a steam graph is The New York Times's visualization The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 — 2008.

Lee Byron, one of the authors of the graph above, started off with visualizing his music history from Last.fm.  I think this was a brilliant way for people to play with data that is relevant to them and aesthetically pleasing.  Here is Lee's steam graph of his music history.

 

That's where LastGraph comes in.  LastGraph allows you to import your Last.fm history and generate a steam graph.  Just type in your Last.fm username and you'll be presented with with your own personal steam graph.

Microsoft Updates its Business Intelligence Strategy

Microsoft just posted an update to its business intelligence strategy on the Microsoft Excel blog.  They write:

PerformancePoint allows you to create context-based web dashboards that can change based on the user's selection, and provide additional commentary via a browser.  You can easily include your existing workbooks within the PerformancePoint Dashboard, thus leveraging your analysis to explain a recent trend, promote further analysis, or justify a decision. Having everyone on the same page just got easier. 

In other words, Microsoft is evangelizing the same core values and features that we're focused on for Swivel Business.  We believe that a rising tide lifts all boats, and are excited about this update to Microsoft's BI strategy.  The more people who have access to data, the better decisions the world will make.

Pirates of the Academy Awards

Check out this great data story about 2009 Oscar movie piracy on Waxy.org.

Andy does a detailed analysis of the piracy of Academy Award movies.  His conclusions:

• Piracy is higher than ever - 23 of the 26 Oscar nominated films are already available in DVD quality on the file sharing networks.
• However, it's taking longer for films to leak online than in the past.

Find out more, download the source data, and see some great graphs at Waxy.

Estimating market size (part 4)

How are your competitors doing?

This week, we're taking a look at a few different ways to estimate the market size for a web 2.0 start-up. Today we're going to talk about how to estimate the market size based on how your competitors are doing in the marketplace.

If you don't already have an idea of who your competitors are think about who sets the standard in your industry, or what types of products/applications are similar to yours. Look at several competitors to get a nice range for your business's market size.

For example, one product similar to ours is Google Docs. It's like Swivel in that it gives people a private space online where they can work with others. Swivel could find a market here among people who are interested in working with their documents online and want a first-class chart creation tool.

From looking at sites like Quantcast and Compete, we can estimate that Google Docs has 1.5 to 2 million unique monthly visitors in the US. If 1 in 20 of those people would be interested in using Swivel, then that's a market size of 75 to 100 thousand unique monthly visitors.

Like I said yesterday, I still have a lot to learn about marketing, but I thought I would share my strategies with you. I'd love to hear marketing tips and stories from you too!

Estimating market size (part 3)

Top Down, Bottom Up

This week, we're taking a look at a few different ways to estimate the market size for a web 2.0 start-up.

Although you don't want to say you can sell your product to everyone (that would just be too easy), you can start there and then break the market into smaller segments to determine the number of potential buyers. So how many of those people are out there?

One way to look at Swivel Business's potential market is to estimate how many people have Microsoft Office and are currently employed.  Now, let's break down a broad market, such as geographic area, into smaller segments:

• How many people are in the US? The US Census estimates 304,059,724 people.
• How many of those people were employed in 2008? A look at some data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics yielded the number 137,248,000 for non-farm workers.
• How many people in the US use Microsoft Office? A few blogs cited 550 million people use Office worldwide, which means about 249 million people in the US have the software.
• We can estimate that about 112 million employed people in the US have Microsoft Office. 
• Now let's hit our target market. If 1 in every 50 of those people use Excel in their jobs, then that's a market size of 2.24 million.

After you reach your target market segment, you can do some sensitivity analysis. What if every 1 in 20 used Excel at work? 1 in 10?

The next step is to look at a different angle and build the market size from the bottom up. For example, I used data from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook to estimate how many people had occupations where using data and creating reports was in the job description.

I still have a lot to learn about marketing, but I thought I would share my strategies with you. I'd love to hear marketing tips and stories from you too!

Estimating market size (part 2)

Finding Free Data

This week, we're taking a look at a few different ways to estimate the market size for a web 2.0 start-up. And today, we're going to talk about where you can find free data.

Data is everywhere. And while you can pay an arm and a leg for professional industry reports, there are plenty of free resources for data. All it takes some ingenuity (and a little patience) to find the numbers you need.

Say your business is a website to help people with diabetes track their insulin levels. You can check out the Centers for Disease and Control to find statistics on people with the disease. Or, let's say you want to create a social network for college students. The US Census Bureau has the population numbers you need.

Throughout the next few blog posts, I'll be linking to sites where you can track down data for free as I show you how we estimated Swivel's market size.

Estimating market size

Last week, we crunched some numbers to estimate a market size for Swivel Business. As I was perusing the web for advice on how a web 2.0 start-up should go about doing this, I was hard pressed to find articles that didn't mention the SDRS mailing list (too old-fashioned) or expensive industry reports (too fancy-schmancy corporate). So I thought I would share with you how we went about completing this exercise, Swivel style.

Finding your market size is almost as much about the logic as it is about the data.  The first step is to think about the market your product could potentially reach. Then, find the numbers to see how many of those people are out there. For Swivel, our target audience is people who work with data, create charts, and want to share them privately with their company or publicly with the world.

Over the next couple of days I'll be posting different strategies for finding free data on the web and estimating a market size. Stay tuned!

Who's got your data?

These days, the average person has so much information online: banking and credit card accounts, business data, social security numbers, medical prescriptions, you name it. Since the trend of putting personal information online isn't slowing down anytime soon, should we be asking the question: who's got your data? And more importantly, is it safe?

Reports of data breaches in the US increased 47 percent in 2008 from the year before, exposing the personal records of at least 35.7 million Americans, according to the Identity Resource Theft Center. Most breaches were electronic (82.3%), while just a handful were on good old fashioned paper (17.7%). The graphs below show the number of breaches and the number of records breached by sector in 2008:

According to the study, 240 breaches were made in the business sector last year. As a company that offers businesses a place to store and explore their data privately online, we're very concerned with data security. You can rest assured, Swivel's taking every possible measure to keep your information secure.