NEWS9 May 2013
US — A New York-based former Accenture consultant has spent the past several months collating data about himself which he’s now looking to sell direct to advertisers.
Federico Zannier – who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in interactive telecommunications at New York University – has been recording all of his online activity since February, including the web pages he’s visited, mouse pointer location and screenshots of what he was looking at.
In addition, Zannier has also compiled all his GPS location data, a log of the apps that he uses on his phone as well as regular webcam images of himself, what he posts on social media sites, his emails and what he buys online.
By September, he expects to have amassed about 7 gigabytes of data – and he’s selling it all on the crowd-funding site Kickstarter.
Pledges start at $2, which gives backers access to an entire day’s worth of data, right up to $200 for the full archive. Higher-level backers also get access to some of the tools Zannier used to record his own data.
Initially he was only looking to generate $500 but he’s bust his target after just three days and already has pledges totalling almost $900 at the time of writing [Editor’s note – we’ve chipped in $5 for a week’s worth of data].
Writing on his Kickstarter page, Zannier said: “I spend hours every day surfing the internet. Meanwhile, companies like Facebook and Google have been using my online information (the websites I visit, the friends I have, the videos I watch) for their own benefit.
“In 2012, advertising revenue in the United States was around $30 billion. That same year, I made exactly $0 from my own data. But what if I tracked everything myself? Could I at least make a couple bucks back?”
We’ve written several times before about the personal information economy and the tools that are now available to help consumers take control of their data. But Zannier is the only person we know about to be trying to sell their data direct to advertisers. Does this make him the first Insumer?