Jigsaw is evil - Part 2

I wrote about Jigsaw, the contact information marketplace, on my May 05 post. I said that Jigsaw is evil and that "every Jigsaw employee and investor has dirty hands and they should be ashamed of themselves". Well, this week it got even worse. Jigsaw announced the so-called "Open Data Initiative" and declared June 4th, 2008 "Data Independence Day". Jigsaw's "Founding Fathers" Garth Moulton and Jim Fowler even recorded a clip dressed in 1776 fashion. Oh my gosh, that's so tacky! Anyhow, better get ready - your business information is now in the hands of millions of sales people ready to sell you anything from Viagra to condos in Jamaica. As Scott McNealy pithily said a while ago about the loss of privacy in the internet era, "Just get used to it".

Comments

[Green_Monkey23]

Sorry for your time…. Why i can’t see images on this resource?
My Browser is: Opera.
Thank you.

From Mario Fantoni:
My Opera shows all the images - here is a screen shot from my computer:
http://www.taguchinow.com/opera_blog.jpg
Try upgrading your version of Opera or waiting 24 hrs.

[Jim Fowler]

Mario,

Wanted to thank you for writing one of the most entertaining blog hits we’ve yet received. As you can imagine, I get asked about the privacy issue a lot. At the heart of the matter are two questions: "Who owns identity?", and "Who should be allowed to profit from someone else’s identity?" These are great questions which are easily answerable from a legal perspective, but not easily answerable from a social or ethical perspective. I think you are well within your right to call any entity that does profit from another's identity "evil". That said, I think you should apply your opinion broadly across the entire data industry. Every data company on the planet sells information about people or other companies - for profit. Jigsaw just has a new and different way to collect the information. Put another way, we are not a new "evil". We just have a new way of doing the "evil". My personal belief is that making business card information transparent does far more good than evil (as stated ably in above comments). However, we are the first to admit that the result of commoditizing this data will be an increase in unwanted communications from sales people, recruiters and marketers. We also believe that this is a macro trend that is going to happen with or without Jigsaw (thank you internet). A great read on this subject is "The Transparent Society" by David Brin. One of the key privacy differentiators between Jigsaw and all other data companies is that we are the ONLY data company that lets you:

- Find out if you are in our database (on our website).
- Set your contact preferences.
- Provide instructions to salespeople, recruiters and marketers.

For the first time people on the receiving end of phone calls and emails are empowered with a voice with which they can tell sales people their rules. Note that these instructions have to be read by Jigsaw members prior to viewing the info on a business card. Jigsaw members can ignore them, but I would guess their odds of making a sale go down when they do… Our goal is to apply efficiency to what is currently a very inefficient process - B2B buying and selling. Sellers can get directly to the right buyer without wasting a bunch of "innocent" people’s time along the path. Buyers can lay out their rules, and hopefully won't have to answer the same set of questions over and over. (Example: "I hate sales people…Don't call me ever.")

Happy to discuss at your leisure.

Jim Fowler (Dr. Evil)
CEO, Jigsaw

[Mario Fantoni]

Jim, I am amazed that you find issues of personal privacy, and the discussion of how you, personally, are providing a service that hurts people, "entertaining". Furthermore, it's clear from your site and your statements above that you do not give people a mechanism for having their data removed from the system. How you can live with yourself is your own issue, but I, for one, am absolutely put off by your very flippant approach to what I consider one of the most important issues of our time: privacy.

Mario Fantoni (Dr. Good)

[Sam Kahler]

Mario, ease up a bit. When were you appointed the "web 2.0 czar of privacy" for all of us? I think saying this "hurts" people is a bit of a stretch — it doesn’t really "hurt" me when someone calls me on the phone trying to do business with me (unless they blow a loud whistle into my ear when they call). Furthermore, where did Jim say it was entertaining? It sounds like Jim is willing to have a conversation about this with you. You are throwing around words like evil and flippant pretty loosely here.

From Mario Fantoni:
"Where did Jim say it was entertaining?" When he said "thank you for writing one of the most entertaining blog hits we’ve yet received." Capisce?

[Don Marti]

I have used Jigsaw since the early days and their quality has DETERIORATED VERY BADLY and I barely use it any longer. So everyone who doesn't like them can feel happy that their model won't work for long as the accuracy sucks and the sales guys give up on them.