Citizenme, a service which aims to put people back in control of their digital information, has announced the availability of its new mobile app which offers cash rewards from brands for data.
The Citizenme app, available for free on iOS and Android, ffers users insights into their digital personality traits and empowers them to monetise their personal data.
In a digital information age, every action creates data which may be harvested by companies without the data owners’ knowledge. Citizenme aims to change this by helping people to reclaim their data for their own benefit. Over time, personal data can be transformed into a valuable tool that people can learn from and utilise in their day-to-day decision making.
Developed in partnership with Cambridge University Psychometric Centre and the University of Sheffield Open Data Science Institute, the Citizenme app initially offers citizens four types of value:
- Personal insights: With the user’s permission, social media profiles are analysed to show how their personality traits vary across different networks;
- Cash rewards: Citizenme’s brand partners can make cash offers to Citizenme users for their personal data. All exchanges of data will remain anonymous for market research and analytics purposes;
- Altruistic donations: Citizenme users can donate their data, anonymously, to charities for research and analytics purposes. This is now another way people can support their favourite charities and social causes;
- Fun: The app also includes quick polls and quizzes that users can take part in to see how their opinions compare to others.
Other features will be launched later in the year, when the company opens up access to its self-service Citizenme exchange. These will include security and privacy enhancements which will support the integration of more data sources and longitudinal persistent data connections
Ryan Garner, Director of Insights at Citizenme, said: “The app we’ve launched enables people to take control of their personal data, understand it and unlock its value. As individuals, our personal data is cool – it’s about us. It has value; financial, emotional, altruistic – and it can also be quite entertaining. This is only the case if we are the ones making the decision about how it’s used.”
The new citizenme app is free to download from the App Store and Play Store and will also be distributed through forward operators and device manufacturers such as WileyFox.
Citizenme was founded by digital Entrepreneur StJohn Deakins in 2013.
