Hiring: Investment Analyst | ER204 8/11 | S’25 Announced

Announcing Research Hub: Build a research practice with the system to seamlessly manage all your participants in one place

It’s here! 🎉

Bring your own audience (BYOA), participant management, the beta formerly known as BYOA, and all the various other—mainly internal—working titles are a thing of the past, because Research Hub is here to stay.

Research Hub you say, what is that all about?

We created Research Hub to help companies make research a habit, to build a research practice. Research Hub is your central command to seamlessly manage all your participants in one place. As our CEO and Co-founder Dennis Meng puts it

We saw far too many product managers, designers, and marketers coordinating research efforts over spreadsheets. We built Research Hub to help companies develop a true research system. We hope teams will now collaborate and coordinate research efforts in a fraction of the time.

If you were part of our beta, perhaps you have tried some of the features already, but you haven’t tried them all, as we’re rolling out some of the most exciting features today.

Here’s what you can do with Research Hub:

Populations – Build your own participant database. Invite users by link or CSV import. No need for them to create User Interviews accounts!

Custom data to build flexible populations – Add labels, custom attributes, and saved filters to your database so you can invite individuals or large groups to a study in a couple of clicks.

*Saved filters are new as of today, and we think they’ll be a game changer for how you organize your participants and quickly add them to any kind of user research session.

A simple “all participants” population.

View participant history – Use participant profiles to view their session history—invites, applications, participation. You’ll also be able to see custom data you add like notes, scores, who has talked with them, etc.

Private projects – Create private projects from your populations using our recruiting and research logistics tools like scheduling, screener surveys, incentive payments, and more. You choose who you want to see and invite to your projects.

Manage session logistics – Use our scheduling, incentive payment, screener and profile matching tools with your own users for fast, flexible recruiting.

Free User Interviews audience recruiting credits – For a limited time all subscription plans include free credits to recruit from the User Interviews audience of over 100,000 vetted consumers and professionals.

This is just the beginning for Research Hub. We’re excited about what we are offering you today, for a very reasonable price and with a 2-week free trial we might add, and even more excited to see how it will develop in the coming months and years.

We can’t think the design partners who helped us get here enough, you know who you are. JH, our VP of Product, wrote all about the whole process of deciding to build Research Hub, and the research and iterations that got us here today. Definitely check out The Research Hub Story blog post if you like a good product story.

Your feedback is crucial to that effort, so we’d love for you to try it out FOR FREE, let us know what you think, and sign up to join our future beta programs for ongoing feedback.

Learn more about User Interviews.

The Importance Of Personalization In Business

We live in the day and age of personalization. Facebook creates personalized stories for each of their users on their anniversary of using the social media site. Target sends personalized coupons based on customer buying history to increase the likelihood of a future sale. Amazon does something similar their “You Might Also Like” feature after purchasing a product to potentially up-sell complementary or similar product.

And the push for personalization makes sense, too. When we think of something as ‘personal’, we think of something we have a bond with, a certain intimacy if you will. Personalization, according to Tech Target, is a “means of meeting the customer’s needs more effectively and efficiently, making interactions faster and easier and, consequently, increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits”. This isn’t to be confused with customization, which is when a customer manually changes things to fit their preferences.

For example, in the music app Spotify, customization would be a customer building a playlist with all of their favorite songs, whereas personalization is when Spotify creates a “Daily Mix” for their user based on an algorithm that analyzes that users song history and preferences.

Essentially, personalization is customization in real-time. But why is personalization so important in business? According to a recent study, 79% of customers are only willing to take advantage of a brand promotion if it’s tailored to their previous interactions; additionally, 78% of customers say that personally relevant content increases their buying intent. The more personalized something feels, even if it’s an advertisement or offer, the more it feels like the business is paying attention to your particular needs.

So where do opportunities for personalization exist within a business?

Email

There are plenty of easy-to-use, powerful tools that allow you to personalize emails, even when they are being sent to the masses. Mailchimp, Robly, Drip, and Autopilot are all easy-to-use platforms that can help you build a personalized email campaign. The personalization of the email often depends on the data you have collected from your customers.

The easiest way to personalize an email is to put the person’s name in the subject line. Making sure the content is relevant to the customer based on past buying history is also important. Even the timing of the email can be customized, as many campaigns allow you to segment by time zones and ensure the email reaches the customer’s inbox at the right time. Depending on the data you’ve collected from the customer, sending a birthday email and offering a freebee or discount is a simple way to gain customer loyalty.

Personalizing emails is worth the effort, too. Personalized emails had 29 percent higher open rates and 41 percent higher click rates than emails without any personalization.

Websites

Many feel that Amazon is the king of personalization in their website and for good reason, too. Based on past buying patterns and behaviors, Amazon is able to immediately recommend other products for customers as soon as they log on.

What are some more practical ways for businesses to personalize web page content?

Some companies who offer a specific product have their customers take a brief survey to personalize content. For example, clothing company Bombfell has their customers take a brief ‘style survey’ to give them the most relevant offers.

Others have an advertising ‘overlay’, where depending on the frequency of visits for a customer, an advertisement can pop up on screen targeted at the customer or offering a one-time discount.

It’s important not to pigeonhole customers into certain product lines in a form of hyper personalization. Letting customers discover new things while offering suggestions is the way to go.

Again, much like emails, website personalization has shown to yield positive ROI. Gartner predicts a 15% profit boost by 2020 for those who successfully handle personalization in eCommerce.

Social Media

Many think personalized content on social media is the next big thing (if it isn’t there already).

Some businesses offer their target demographic exclusive social media invitations to try new products in the hopes of those customers posting content featuring that product. It’s not a bad strategy, after all, about 71% of the consumers respond according to the feedback and recommendation of social users regarding a particular brand.

Keep in mind, it’s important to know what social media platforms your audience engages the most with. Homogeneous approaches are rarely successful and amount to wasted time and energy. A visual product would likely succeed more on Instagram or Pinterest, whereas Facebook would be a better platform for long-form posts.

Benefits of Personalization

Some of the statistics above emphasized the potential increase in conversions by targeting personal preferences and past purchases. In addition, conversions can be made more quickly (think ‘one-click’ purchasing) but there are other benefits as well.

It can build passion with your audience. For example, a sports apparel business who knows a batch of customers avidly support a particular team can send a blog article about that team to that group. That group doesn’t just love sports. They love that team. Targeting that niche level of passion can create long-lasting loyalty.

Along those lines, monotony is a killer of engagement, and that includes your website. Website and content personalization keeps things fresh and makes it so the customer doesn’t feel like they’re always going back to the ‘same old, same old’.

In addition to existing companies, personalization can nurture new customers. Depending on how they entered into your website (social media, through a campaign), there can be a customized welcome even without knowing any of their specific information.

Notice, all of these pros of personalization are meant to make the customer feel special and like an individual human being as opposed to just a ‘sale’.

Conclusion

Personalization is a major factor in modern-day business to having the customer come back for repeat purchases. With a little bit of customer data and knowledge of your customer persona, you can have a real-time customization of their buying journey.

Learn more about SaleMove.

You’re Most Likely Tipping More than a Millionaire—Here’s Why

In the past, we’ve written a lot about the relationships between restaurants and their customers, customers and delivery platforms, and delivery platforms and restaurants. But one relationship in the game that we’ve yet to address is that between delivery drivers and the customers they deliver to. Namely, the issue of the tip.

This week, we set out to do just that, analyzing the order delivery data from New York City’s highest earning industries to give you the lowdown on the city’s thriftiest tippers.

Background

It’s common knowledge that New York City is a leading center of finance in the world economy — financial services account for more than 35 percent of the city’s employment income. Average compensation is the industry is $388,000 per year—five times higher than the average New Yorker’s salary in the private sector. New York also has the highest concentration of jobs in the legal profession, only behind California, with lawyers in the empire state earning an average yearly income of $165,260.

Investment bankers love food delivery just as much as the next person. The ease of giving your order the team member in charge of lunch orders and having hot food being delivered to your office desk can’t be beat. But is the delivery person who endures traffic, adverse weather conditions, and the MTA all day getting fairly compensated for your convenience?

  • The average salary of someone in finance is $388,000. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics on the other hand, food delivery or sales workers earn an average of $28,090 per year, with most deliverers working seven days a week.
  • The national average delivery tip on Seamless is 13.9 percent per order, with New Yorkers falling below average at 13.1 percent.

And as we found, employees at New York’s biggest banks and law firms fare even lower.

Let’s set up some context.

Tip Etiquette

Our initial hypothesis was that companies in finance would be hefty tippers, or at least, they have the means to be hefty tippers. A similar level of gratuity was expected from the other industries — Legal Services, Venture Capital, and Software. We expected there to be some data points showing 0% tip, to which we attributed tips paid in cash. We also expected those who place frequent orders to tip less on average, justifying their low tip with their order frequency.

Tipping etiquette can be the source of hot debate. Most people who’ve worked in the service industry say tipping is always mandatory and a 20 percent tip should be the standard. But when to tip and how much can often be a source of confusion for customers, especially now in the age of on-demand delivery.

The Emily Post Institute recommends a pre-tax tip of 15-20% — and this is pretty much the standard across other sources as well.

The confusion and remiss may be attributed to the fact that apps like Seamless and GrubHub charge a delivery fee. As a way to offset the high commissions that third-party delivery services take on each restaurant order, restaurant owners often put in place an additional charge for orders placed through an app. These delivery fees rarely, if ever go to drivers, and should not be considered a substitute for tip.

The other confusion could be around whether tip is mandatory. Seamless and other apps don’t make users pay a tip. Instead, they offer suggested gratuities on their checkout page, but Seamless’ website recommends that delivery people get paid between 10% – 20% of the order total. The site’s order page even has a default tip amount of 15%.

In summary, this is what we know:

  • There’s certainly confusion about order delivery tip vs. order delivery fee (why do I have to pay twice?)
  • There’s definitely ambiguity around who it goes to (the third-party app, the restaurant, or the deliverer?)
  • There’s also a bit of psychology involved (if the delivery guy who orders my food is also delivering 5 other orders of food to my company, does that justify giving a lower tip, since I know others are going to tip him too? Cue an Econ lesson in free-riders)

What did we find?

Here’s what we found.

We dove into the last three months of order delivery data from a dozen of the restaurants we work with. We made sure our sample accurately represented the distribution of New York City restaurants on delivery platforms, offering everything from fast food to fine dining, catering to a diverse clientele, and serving multiple corporate accounts through Seamless.

We looked at the data from 383 distinct companies in the Finance, Legal, VC, Software, Consulting, and Consumer Goods industries who all hold corporate accounts at these restaurants.

    • 2.3 percent of diners gave no tip.
      • What it means: Let’s be optimistic and say these customers gave a tip in cash.
    • 13.33 percent of customers tipped a positive amount less than 8%
      • What it means: Confusion around how much to tip, dissatisfaction with delivery service, general disregard for the delivery worker.
    • 17.54 percent of customers gave a tip lower than 10%.
      • What it means: Here, there’s no way to justify a low tip by saying you paid in cash. Seeing as though over 70% of the Seamless orders placed at these restaurants are from recurring customers, these customers definitely made the conscious decision to add a measly tip to their card on file.
    • The highest tip percentage was a 40% tip.
      • What it means: A really happy customer coupled with quick delivery? Or they just did the math wrong.
    • The median order value was $22. The average order value was $30.11.
      • What it means: There are a wide range of order types coming from offices, from large office-wide orders to one-off dishes.

 

 

The Consumer Goods and Financial Services industry verticals lie on the lower end of the tipping spectrum, while Consulting and Law take the cake.

 

 

 

 

The national average lies at 13.9% for delivery tips, and it’s clear that these banks are trailing behind (all but Morgan Stanley). UBS didn’t even come close, with a strikingly low tip percentage of 9.67%.

As the data shows, Morgan Stanley is leading the pack at 14.24%, with Barclays close behind at 13.40%. As for law firms, Allen & Overy impressed at 15.68%, with the entire legal sector demonstrating higher numbers across the board.

 

One thing to keep in mind while looking at aggregate company data is that obviously, there were individuals within the company who gave generous tips. These conclusions are not to say that everyone who works in these industries are looking to save a few bucks on tip.

Industry vs. Tip%

Bank vs. Tip%

Law Firm vs. Tip%

The Bigger Picture

In the end, this tipping data gives us a lot of insight into the psychology and habits of those who order through delivery apps, and into shifting consumer behaviors aided by delivery apps. We could draw conclusions about the type of people in each profession, or we could also realize that across the board, tip percentages are all lower than the industry standard.

Delivery technology and the ‘gig economy’ has given an old issue a new platform, namely the issue of designating workers as independent contractors not entitled to benefits and protection.

Fundamentally, the relationship to capital has not changed, and one could argue these apps have negatively affected the way consumers conceive of and interact with delivery workers, especially through tipping.

Tipping a faceless delivery person through the anonymous touch of a button seems to encourage a veil of thrift to hide behind, and is exacerbated among those who actually have the means to do otherwise.

As a restaurant owner, data about your customers is not only useful for exposing the tipping habits of multi-billion dollar corporations; it’s actually really important for you to monitor as a restaurant owner. If you’re on multiple delivery platforms, your focus should be on regaining control over the information they withhold from you.

Knowing what motivates your customers, what their lifestyles and preferences are, how loyal they are to your restaurant, and even how much they tip delivery personnel is extremely valuable.

To sum up, the restaurant delivery funnel is a tricky one. Everyone along the way is trying to make money: restaurants are trying to mitigate the high delivery commissions, consumers want to pay as little as possible for convenience, third-party delivery services have steep competition, and in the end, the delivery service workers get the short end of the stick. Maybe this brings to light some of the changes needed in the industry if we want everyone to have a fair shot.

Report: Data from Rubik Shows Great Market for NYC Residential Real Estate Investors

Rubik is apartment pricing software for residential real estate investors. Our AI-powered algorithms have been scouring millions of New York City past sale records, uncovering a market ripe for investment opportunities.

Surprised? We weren’t because this $1.5 trillion asset class in New York is highly outdated and lacks data-driven investment decisions. Whether for rental investment purposes, appreciation, or even arbitrage through a quick buy and resell, there are opportunities to capitalize on mispricing.

Let’s show you some results from predicting the selling price of over 5,000 active listings in greater New York City.

Here’s what we found:

  • Condominiums are on average underpriced, listed at 6% below their optimal selling price. Considering the current average asking price of $1.7M, sellers are failing to capitalize on over $100,000 per sale.
  • 59% of all condos are listed at one-fifth lower than their potential selling price.
  • 1,000+ listings are priced at 14.6% above their expected selling price.

Here are some neighborhood extremes surfaced by the Rubik algorithm.

Have a look at Brooklyn Heights vs Midtown:

  • Multiple studio units in Brooklyn Heights are listed at 17.2% below their optimal selling price.
  • Brooklyn Heights is the neighborhood with the greatest discrepancy between optimal selling price and listing price, with condos listed at 10.4% below their optimal selling price.
  • One-bedroom condos in Midtown are listed at 16.3% above predicted selling price.

Find this summary interesting? Contact us to learn more about how we can help you unearth your next residential real estate opportunity at [email protected].

Image Credit: www.fassinoimmobiliare.com

Future of Mobile Wallets: NFC and Mobile MetroCards

metro map.jpg

Picture this: It’s 8:20 in the morning and you’re rushing off to work with your umbrella, apartment keys, and shoulder bag in hand. You head down the block and into the subway station. You rummage through your bag in search for your MetroCard as your train approaches the station. You swipe hurriedly, but when you look down, you read this message: Please swipe again at this turnstile. Your train has just arrived. You swipe again only to get more bad news: Insufficient fare. Your train pulls out of the station.

Anyone living in the Big Apple knows what a hassle it can be to keep track of those flimsy MetroCards. Since the ‘90s, MetroCards have been the “modern” way to pay for public transportation. Today, however, physical cards are becoming outdated. They are a hassle to refill, easy to lose, and can be unreliable—so what’s the alternative? Mobile MetroCards.

Many large European cities have successfully adapted to mobile payments within their transportation system. Thousands of London commuters pay for their rides by waving their cell phones (or enabled credit or debit cards) at the subway turnstiles or bus fareboxes. Similarly, the fashion-forward city of Milan has just announced that their new transportation system is supported by Apple Pay, allowing users to pay for tickets with their iPhone or Apple Watch.

The New York City transit system is recreating a comparable program for its buses, trains, and subways. This transition is already underway and is expected to be completed by 2023. According to The New York Times, “the system will work through apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay as well as “contactless cards” — credit or debit cards with embedded chips that rely on a wireless technology known as near field communication, or NFC.”

NFC is the same technology already used for in-person payments with the mobile wallet. NFC allows two devices to communicate and share data when they are close together, and is highly encrypted to maintain security. It has enabled contactless payments, and has the potential to replace that faulty MetroCard swipe with a quick wave or tap of a smartphone. Not only would mobile MetroCards be more convenient for millions of daily commuters, but it would also make keeping track of travel expenses much more reliable. Never again would you have to worry about a lost, stolen, or empty MetroCard.

And mobile MetroCards are just the beginning! For years, mobile wallets have supported boarding passes, loyalty and gift cards, tickets, and offers. With newly developed mobile college IDs, the list of mobile wallet capabilities will only continue to grow. Smartphones and other mobile devices are so heavily ingrained in our daily routines that it won’t be long before the mobile wallet becomes a day-to-day necessity. One thing’s for sure: in the realm of possibility for mobile wallets, we’ve only reached the tip of the iceberg.

Sources (1)(2)(3)

What is Actual Cash Value (ACV) vs Replacement Cost in Home Insurance?

Actual Cash Value vs Replacement Cost

When you buy insurance, you often are offered the option between actual cash value and replacement cost. BEWARE! While the actual cash value option will be cheaper, it means your stuff will be drastically under-insured in a loss.

Actual Cash Value means if your personal stuff gets destroyed or stolen, you will only be refunded the used value of your property (often called the depreciated value).

Example: You have a big couch that you bought for $3,000 five years ago. It get’s destroyed in a fire, and the insurance company says the average life of this type of couch is 10 years. They say they will only pay you $1,500 for this couch because it had 5 useful years remaining. (1/2 the value to buy a new couch)

So basically, you got back…. half a couch

confused what is this? GIF

Replacement Cost means your stolen or damaged stuff will get replaced like new. A full replacement, restoring your stuff back to its original condition. In the above example, you will get the full $3,000 for the couch.

Young Alfred never recommends you choose Actual Cash Value in your home insurance policy and always quotes home insurance policies with Replacement Cost. It’s what you need.

Click to learn more about Young Alfred.

NYC’s Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator Announces Participants for its Summer 2018 Program; 14 Companies Receive $100,000 Investments

New York—June 11, 2018—Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA) today announced that it has selected 14 startups for its Summer 2018 class, which begins today. The companies selected to participate in the four-month program are innovating in a variety of significant industries, all with businesses primed to grow in New York City.

This is the Accelerator’s 15th program. ERA’s initial investment in participant companies is $100,000.

Agilis is a B2B commerce platform for the chemical distribution industry. We help consolidate the industry’s fragmented supply chain, drive sales growth, and bring efficiencies to an antiquated procurement, sales, and marketing process. Agilis provides chemical producers with the tools and analytics they need to manage and optimize this highly-complex value chain.

Airbud is a voice platform that allows enterprises to easily add voice capabilities to their websites and mobile apps. We allow customers to have two-way conversations that simplify their access to relevant information. Starting with healthcare, we enable organizations to better engage with their existing customers and reduce the cost of customer support.

Bikky is a customer engagement platform for restaurants. We integrate with ordering channels like GrubHub and DoorDash to consolidate customer data and provide a unified view of a restaurant’s delivery business. Restaurants use Bikky to build customer loyalty through automated marketing engagement.

Daivergent is a technology platform providing human intelligence to support development of AI products through our exceptional remote workforce: adults with autism. Our platform handles the assessment, training, and project management that enables this workforce to complete customer data tasks up to three times more accurate and faster than a typical person.

Ettitude is a direct-to-consumer bedding and homewares brand. Starting with bedding and sleepwear, we use the world’s first organic bamboo lyocell fabric to manufacture soft, cooling, odor-absorbent, and hypoallergenic products. We give our customers stylish, sustainable and ethically produced comfort for a fraction of the cost of silk and luxury cotton.

Maivino is a subscription service for high-quality wine specially packaged to stay fresh for six weeks after the first pour. We curate undiscovered wines and make them accessible and affordable for everyday enjoyment by sourcing directly from small-batch producers. We then ship them to customers in our proprietary bag packaging.

ProdPerfect is a platform that automatically builds, runs, and maintains quality assurance regression tests for web applications. We analyze live user traffic to build test cases from behavior patterns, giving engineering teams comprehensive testing coverage that continuously updates as new features are added.

Rocket Cloud is a software platform for building materials wholesalers. Our automation software provides a bridge to outdated legacy ERP systems, enabling our customers to sell their inventory on e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Walmart for the first time. We then provide customers business intelligence tools to optimize online commerce performance.

Rubik is an investment analysis software platform for institutional real estate funds. Our technology screens an entire market in real-time and unlocks the best investment opportunities in single family homes. Rubik helps funds improve portfolio performance.

Theta is a cloud-based blueprint analysis and cost estimation tool for the construction industry. We use machine learning and image recognition to analyze blueprints and make them fully searchable by both text and images. Theta automates the estimation process, enabling developers and contractors to quickly price projects, replacing inefficient and error-prone manual processes.

Threshing Floor Security is a cybersecurity company. Our product integrates with the most widely-used enterprise security products, enabling security teams to find the alerts that matter in their network. We collect, aggregate, and analyze internet background noise, including authentication attempts, network scans, and web scrapers.

Triyo is a collaboration and project management platform for enterprises. We give teams in finance and other highly regulated environments a single, centralized overview to monitor complex business processes including document lifecycle, projects, tasks, and audit trails. Our process engine replicates natural group behaviors for teams of any size across multiple geographies.

Woveon is a customer engagement platform for enterprises that aggregates conversations from channels including CRM, phone calls, email, and social media onto a single dashboard. We use AI to surface the information most relevant to managing and resolving customer inquiries, resulting in more productive consumer interactions with better outcomes.

About Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator (ERA)

Based in the heart of Manhattan, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator is one of New York’s leading technology accelerators and early-stage venture capital funds. It has invested in more than 165 start-ups since launching in 2011, helping to build the next generation of great New York technology companies. Its alumni companies, who come from all over the world, are already playing leading roles in the evolution of virtually every major global industry.

 

 

 

 

Privacy in California

Lift Letters

MAY 20, 2018

While the digital publishing ecosystem nervously awaits May 25, the effective date of GDPR, this law only tells part of the story. Two additional measures may add further challenges to the digital marketing ecosystem and bolster privacy efforts online. The first is the European ePrivacy Regulation. Though not completely finalized, this may make cookie usage even more difficult within the EU than the GDPR (this new ePrivacy Regulation will likely be discussed in a subsequent Lift Letter). The second is the California Privacy Initiative. We discuss the latter in more detail.

LiftLetters-PrivacyInCali.jpg

The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, is at is formally known, has four pillars. The first is that it allows consumers to request from companies a complete disclosure of all the information that it has collected about them; the second is the right to, upon request by the consumer, have the company not sell the data or share it with any third parties for any business purposes (via a conspicuous link labelled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” on the homepage); the third is that companies may not discriminate against, or refuse service for those who have opted opted out, and finally, the right to damages for violations (at least $1,000 per consumer per violation). It is noteworthy that companies are still allowed to use personal data for their own purposes, including selling advertising – the primary scope of the prohibition would be against selling or disclosing that data to third parties, upon request. To appear on the ballot in November, the initiative required 366,000 signatures. It has thus far collected over 600,000. Though it has yet to be formally certified, it is expected to appear on the ballot.

That it is a California privacy initiative is significant for many reasons. The first, of course, is that California is enormous. The state recently overtook the UK, to be the 5th largest economy in the world (behind only the USA, China, Japan and Germany). It is also the home to many of the largest tech companies, including Google and Facebook, who are implicitly the primary targets. Both have have mounted meaningful opposition to the initiative – though Facebook dropped its position in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, as part of its new image to support privacy. That said, Facebook (along with each of Google, Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T) made a $200,000 donation to “The Committee to Protect California Jobs” – the opposition lobbying group – before withdrawing support, and has not withdrawn its donation.

Much like the GDPR, the California initiative takes an expansive view of personal data. This includes identifiers including name and email address, but also unique identifiers and IP addresses. It also includes browsing history, interactions with ads, geo data, or any inferences drawn from any personal data. Unique identifier is defined aggressively to mean any persistent identifier that can be used to recognize a consumer or device across different services – explicitly including IP addresses, cookies, etc – and even includes probabilistic identifiers to the extent that they resolve to an identity with more than 50% certainty.

The proposed Initiative may not substantially change how Facebook and Google run the primary parts of their business. This turns substantially on the definition of the word “sell.” When a marketer buys an ad targeting “women, 18-34, that like cats” – Facebook may not actually be selling that data, as in the buyer of the ads does not obtain that particular data about the targeted users. It’s Facebook’s use of Facebook’s own data, and not letting third parties access that data. As defined in the Initiative, “selling” means: (A) selling, renting, releasing, disclosing, disseminating, making available, transferring, or otherwise communicating […] a consumer’s personal information by the business to a third party for valuable consideration; or (B) sharing orally, in writing, or by electronic or other means, a consumer’s personal information with a third party, whether for valuable consideration or for no consideration, for the third party’s commercial purposes. Thus it is unclear that third parties leveraging a first party’s collected data can be prohibited under the proposed Initiative if that data is not actually transferred.

Assuming this Initiative were to go in effect tomorrow, publishers – which are the primary endpoints to consumers, as with all companies that collect any personal data as defined under the Initiative (nearly all tech companies) would need to enable opt-outs on their homepages. Upon an opt-out, no data could be shared with third parties, which includes ad tech platforms, Thus, the technical infrastructure to prevent downstream cookie / personal information sharing on a per-user basis would have to be developed, much like the consent management platforms in Europe for GDPR. Further, a key component of the law is producing the data that is held by the various companies – this may require publishers develop integrations with all their downstream partners to allow disclosure of all relevant data. Companies like Facebook and Google might, out of an abundance of caution, decide that this applies to them and also implement opt-outs. The Initiative would not, however, cause the same level of mass uncertainty on day 1 as GDPR, where the actual overall ability to monetize is in question – because only when users proactively opt out would cookies etc be impacted. Finally, if implement, along with the new ePrivacy, GDPR, and various proposed South American privacy laws, publishers and ad tech will need to implement an increasingly complex patchwork of privacy regulations with potentially massive fines.

How to get Home Insurance with a Pool, Diving Board, and Slide

If your home has a pool, you may find some difficulties shopping for home insurance. This is because swimming pools often attract additional risks – the neighbor’s kids sneak in for a late night skinny dip or a toddler falls in and nobody is looking. Yikes! No matter who gets hurt, you can be found liable.

For this reason, most home insurance companies will add a fee if your home has a pool. They will also require a fence at least 4 ft high surrounding the pool to prevent children from wandering in.

But what if you also have a diving board or slide? You might find yourself getting rejected by nearly every home insurance company in town. I mean, the increased risk of injury is pretty obvious…

Lucky for you, Young Alfred does work with carriers that are willing to insure your home with a diving board or slide, and these include Swyfft, Hippo, and State Auto.

You can check your rates by filling out a form here.

At your service,
Young Alfred

Sayspring is now part of Adobe. Here are some details about what that means.

As of April 16, 2018, Sayspring is now part of Adobe. There have been a few changes to the Sayspring platform, so we wanted to share some details below.

Is the Sayspring platform shutting down?

No. Sayspring will continue to be available to current customers. Customers can continue to communicate with us directly and submit support questions when needed. We will also keep our customers and community aware of new features and functionality as they are added to Sayspring.

How will this affect Sayspring?

The biggest change is how we handle plans and billing, and there will be some small changes to some Sayspring features.

What are the changes to plans and billing?

We no longer have paid plans, and all premium features are now available to all Sayspring users, free of charge for the near term. All recurring invoices for current customers have been cancelled. In addition, all charges made after March 16, 2018 have been refunded back to the original method of payment.

What are the changes to Sayspring features?

There have been some changes to project sharing.

Share an Interactive Project with Anyone
You can now share your interactive Sayspring project via a public page that doesn’t require a Sayspring account. Using the Chrome browser, anyone can talk to your project on that page.

No Longer Able to Share Projects between Non-Team Members
You can no longer share a project with a non-team member within Sayspring. If you want someone to have access to your project within their Sayspring account, you both must be on a Sayspring team together. If you don’t have access to a Sayspring team, click HELP in the top navigation, then send us a Support request asking for team access.

More Features to Come

There are also some new features that will be launching soon, so keep an eye out.

What will happen to Sayspring’s other products?

We are putting all of our focus into furthering Sayspring as part of Adobe, so we’ve decided to shut down two small services – Voicegram and Audio Converter – we had previously launched.

Voicegram by Sayspring has been shut down
A few months ago, we launched the Voicegram by Sayspring service (previously located at voicegram.sayspring.com), that allows anyone to record and share a conversation with Amazon Alexa. We are in the process of integrating this functionality into the Sayspring platform, and have shut down Voicegram as a stand-alone service.

If you have previously created Voicegrams, they are still available through the email you were originally sent. We will eventually stop hosting live Voicegrams in the coming months, so please make sure you download those videos as soon as possible. Don’t worry, we’ll send out an email giving Voicegram creators advanced notice of when this is scheduled to happen.

Audio Converter has been shut down
The Sayspring Audio Converter service (previously located at audio.sayspring.com) is also being integrated directly into Sayspring, and has been shut down as a stand-alone service.

Where can I get help and support for Sayspring?

The Sayspring team will still be handling all of our own help and support. To make things easier for users, we integrated our support section directly into Sayspring. You can click HELP in the top navigation bar to find helpful articles about using the platform. If you have a question, just click Contact Us in Sayspring and we’ll be happy to help.

How can I get access to Sayspring?

All new users will need to submit an invitation request to get access to Sayspring, and select invitations will be sent out on a rolling basis. You can submit a Sayspring invitation request here.

I used to have a free Sayspring account, what happened?

If you had previously registered for a free Sayspring account but have been inactive for the 60 days prior to April 16, 2018, you will need to submit a new invitation request.

When will I receive an invite?

Invitation requests will be reviewed periodically, and select invitations will be sent out on a rolling basis.