Open Data Now: The Secret to Hot Startups, Smart Investing, Savvy Marketing, and Fast Innovation (Business Books)

function as data aggregators, Gnip and Datasift, can now put all that Twitter data in a manageable form and sell it to companies that want to use it.

chosen a simple and expansive definition of Open Data: it’s accessible public data that people, companies, and organizations can use to launch new ventures, analyze patterns and trends, make data-driven decisions, and solve complex problems. Others

The organizations mentioned in this chapter are doing influential work that citizens and companies alike should follow. They include: • The Center for Public Integrity • Global Witness • Good Jobs First • MySociety • Open Corporates • Project on Government Oversight • ProPublica • The Sunlight Foundation The see-through society doesn’t just apply t

Some of the most sought-after business consultants are the experts in social customer service who teach companies how to keep their customers happy and their online reputations positive.

Amazon service that pays people to do these kinds of “human intelligence tasks,” can attract more participants by paying more. But, significantly, higher payments don’t help increase accuracy. The nature of the task, and of the community engaged in

Enigma.io, which may become one of the most interesting Open Data businesses. Enigma.io was launched because two friends working with very different kinds of data realized they faced some common problems. Hicham Oudghiri was a currency trader working

Miller described how Influence Explorer can show that a major company is one of the biggest spenders on lobbying and campaign contributions, show how many executives it has on federal advisory committees and how much it receives in federal grants and contracts, and show how many times it’s been cited by the EPA.

Since few people are database experts, most will use this Open Data through an intermediary—a “choice engine” that integrates the data and helps people filter it by what’s important to them,

Smart Disclosure and helped craft its official definition: the timely release of complex information and data in standardized, machine-readable formats in ways that enable consumers to make informed decisions.

MoneySupermarket.com, Confused.com, and GoCompare.com have been so successful.