Data power to the people!

Swivel.com just released their beta today. In their words, its 'a place where curious people explore all kinds of data'. From its early looks, it looks like a consumer web 2.0 crossed with business web 2.0 sort of thing! Its way out there...they must think a lot of lay people out there are data junkies. I certainly am one, and can almost feel a rush about an idea like this. But its useful to stop think about who would really pay to use Swivel.

Now, I know (from being a business data junkie!) that LOTs of people (specially business people) like to LOOK at SOME amount of data analysis (operative words in caps), particularly if it is simply communicated. But relatively FEW people like to WORK and EXPLORE ALL KINDS of data, and only a miniscule number care about complex data analysis. Quite simply, IMO, not very many people are very curious about things like working and exploring data.

So who would pay for Swivel? And who would use it?

I think there are several clues about it, if you look at the past couple of incarnations of Swivel over the last 2 years. They started as Grand Central Communications sometime in 2004 to provide data integration on demand for small businesses, and were covered on this blog a little over a year back. That venture folded late 2005 - most likely because it was too much of a technology fix looking for a good problem to solve. Their next avatar was a pre-cursor to the current Swivel (see "Grand Central turning to Swivel"), where they figured small business e-commerce was the general integration problem they were going to solve....a single view of data from eBay, Amazon shops, Google ads, yahoo shops, Quickbooks, Salesforce.com...primarily for the small online business. Their latest avatar looks like they're tuning this model further, though now more broadly positioned. The problem they've zeroed in upon is general purpose, on-demand, consumer-friendly analytics. They may be onto something here....particularly while addressing the small business market, a simple and complete horizontal solution is certainly a bigger (and safer) bet than a techie-directed vertical solution.

I am sure a lot of small business owners, and particularly those with a bunch of online operations, want to look at simple analytics related to their business operations, delivered within a simple user experience. But they don't have the time, resources or inclination to buy the data infrastructure, mess around with data and get to the insight. Nor the resources to hire the people to do it. Small businesses can barely hire enough people to man their operations, leave alone analysts. That's where another user community for Swivel comes in - individual analysts and boutique consulting shops - analytic IP producers and analytic services providers , who would provide small business with analysis and insight thru Swivel.

So there you go - bring together business owners and independent analysts, connect them into a variety of data sources, assemble a turnkey data infrastructure solution, and provide the means to do business (billing, account mgmt, services marketing...)...provided on-demand, fee-based, with a collaborative, consumer friendly web experience. Voila!

If that's where Swivel is headed, I sense a decent revenue model there..I can now pretty much feel the rush! I wish these guys will take this to the moon!