Launching a brand new data-privacy product to the media, days after the government managed to lose two discs containing the names, addresses and bank details of 25 million people, looked like a public relations masterstroke. In fact, it was simply good timing
Garlik, the online data protection company created by Egg founders Mike Harris and Tom Ilube, last night unveiled QDOS, a "digital status" tool that measures the online footprint of 45 million UK adults. Harris, who made his name at First Direct, selling direct banking to the masses, said the government's data transgression provided a timely backdrop to the launch. "This has been two years in the making," he said, "and then somebody did a very good job of raising awareness last week."
Harris added that his intention was to build a global business out of QDOS, utilising Garlik's "great knowledge and expertise in this sector." It was no empty pledge. Alongside Harris and Ilube, the Garlik team boasts a heavyweight line-up of technology and data experts, including Nigel Shadbolt, current president of the British Computer Society; Simon Davies, who founded privacy and data protection group Privacy International; and Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who, among other things, invented the Web.
Shadbolt's contribution as Garlik's chief technology officer is key—as is that of Sir Tim, who is part of the start-up's advisory board—because QDOS runs on Semantic Web technology, which allows Garlik's database to locate and distinguish between 45 million UK adults, providing each with an individual digital-status score. Part of Professor Shadbolt's work at Southampton University involves the commercialisation of Semantic Web technology.
Why should we care about digital status? Garlik believes that as more and more of us start to organise our lives digitally, the value of our digital identities will become increasingly important. "With all the information available on the internet," said Ilube, "in a couple of hours I would have enough to steal the identities of most of the people in this room."
But despite the government's unwitting intervention last week, trying to scare consumers into understanding the power of their digital footprint is not working, he said. "We have given every adult in the UK a QDOS score and that's important because we want to drive engagement. We want to get millions of consumers engaging with their digital status, because when they do the conversation about digital identity will change suddenly and profoundly. This is your identity. This is who you are. It's not something to be afraid of."
To acquire a QDOS rating, users simply type in their name and postcode. That information is checked against Garlik's huge, semantically tagged database, which then calculates your score, based on the extent of that person's online network, their popularity, their main online activity and how easy they are to find. The bigger the digital footprint, the bigger the score. Non-UK residents have been rated too, provided they are famous enough. The Dalai Lama has a rating of 5,590, for example, while Bill Gates enjoys a slightly bigger score of 6,402.
The success of QDOS will depend greatly on how consumers value their score. Does a bigger footprint mean that your data is easier to steal? Is there information stored on long-forgotten sites that you'd rather wasn't there? Garlik's own research into the value of digital identity forms some interesting conclusions. According to PCP Market Research, one in five adults have researched a prospective boss online before accepting a job, while 16 per cent have used the Web to research prospective neighbours before completing a house purchase. "The way you project yourself in the digital world really matters," said Ilube.
So far Garlik has been pretty good at raising awareness—the World Economic Forum announced this afternoon that it had chosen the company as one of its technology pioneers for 2008—but naturally one of the key questions for investors 3i and Doughty Hanson & Co is whether or not Garlik can make any money out of it. Garlik's DataPatrol service, which claims to protect Web users from identity theft, requires a £3 monthly subscription, but Ilube offered little to suggest that in the short-term QDOS will add anything more than goodwill to company coffers. "The key question at any venture capital pitch is, 'yes, but how are you going to monetize their eyeballs?' I'm not sure I want my eyeballs monetized."
Instead, he told Director, QDOS should be valued on its potential for future dominance of the sector. "Imagine if tens of millions of people worldwide got seriously engaged with their digital identities and there was only one company, Garlik, that was completely and unambiguously consumer-sided," he said. "I think there will be a whole range of products and services required in that industry to meet the consumer needs that emerge. But it's impossible to predict what those needs will be in advance."
So no plans to profit from what would easily be the world's most accurate consumer database? "It may be, but we won't sell it," said Ilube. "We think there is more value in being possibly the world's only pure, consumer-sided identity company. There is more long-term value in that than any short-term value to be had from exploiting a database."
QDOS is very much a work in progress—ultimately, the consumer reaction will shape how successful it becomes. But what Garlik has right now is an innovative product, marshalled by some of the greatest technical minds money can buy—led by a team with a proven track record in consumer marketing. HMRC's data slip might have been bad news for the government, but for data companies like Garlik, the future is looking increasingly profitable.
Posted 29 November 2007 : Director.co.uk