Swivel is a self-described “youtube for data.”

Swivel Co-founders Dmitry Dimov and Brian Mulloy start off by describing their company as “YouTube for Data.” That’s a good start for someone trying to understand it, because the site allows users to upload data - any data - and display it to other users visually. The number of page views your website generates. Or a stock price over time. Weather data. Commodity prices. The number of Bald Eagles in Washington state. Whatever. Uploaded data can be rated, commented and bookmared by other users, helping to sort the interesting (and accurate) wheat from the chaff. And graphs of data can be embedded into websites. So it is in fact a bit like a YouTube for Data.

But then the real fun begins. You and other users can then compare that data to other data sets to find possible correlation (or lack thereof). Compare gas prices to presidential approval ratings or UFO sightings to iPod sales. Track your page views against weather reports in Silicon Valley. See if something interesting occurs.

How will they make money? By selling the ability to protect data uploaded to the service:

Not all data will be public. The companies business model is to provide the service for free for public data, and charge a fee for data that is kept private. Private data can still be compared by the owner to public data sets.

This will be incredibly cool right up to the point that people start uploading Personal Data or sensitive corporate data to the free site because they’re clueless or their company wants the analysis but isn’t willing to pay for the access control.

I can see huge opportunities to poison analysis with bad data sets. I can see this being a great tool for astroturf campaigns. It’s excellent plausible deniability: “Don’t believe me, believe the (bad) data!”

Regardless, I think it’s probably the scariest coolest thing I’ve seen all week.

[…] Among those who work with data for a living (or a passion), there’s quite a bit of excitement over a brand new online service called Swivel, which acts as a hub for storing and sharing data sets. The idea is that, in true “web 2.0″ fashion, anyone out there can simply upload whatever data they have and can share it and let others explore it, modify it, compare it, or upload their own data. The data can be on just about anything. While that may be exciting to statisticians (both amateur and pro) of all stripes, it has some security types worried. The fear is that the ease with which swivel allows people to share and expose data means that, whether inadvertently or on purpose, private data will eventually get exposed using the system. While the service does allow for privacy settings, they cost extra, making them even less likely to be used. It’s services like this that remind people that the data landscape is constantly shifting. While Swivel may never catch on, if it does, it opens up both unique possibilities for making data useful (and interesting) as well as security risks that most people probably never imagined before. […]

We have alredy seen the scenario you predicted. We hopped on it quickly with the person who uploaded the data. We’re going to vigilent. But we’ll likely need some good solutions so that the security risks doesn’t impede the value of what we’re trying to provide. Thoughtful post.

Brian Mulloy
CEO & Cofounder
www.swivel.com

typos. hate ‘em.

…so that the security risks don’t impede…

Not all data will be public. The companies business model is to provide the service for free for public data, and charge a fee for data that is kept private. Private data can still be compared by the owner to public data sets.