for instance, wanted homemakers to

know that it sells a range of cleaning

products beyond bleach. It introduced
TimeWise, a Web program where
consumers could schedule reminders
for cleaning tasks and kids' chores. The
brand name was prominent on the site,
naturally, as were offers for comple-
mentary products. Clorox won't discuss
the promotion's efficacy, but it has been
discontinued.
Appearing useful is of particular in-
terest to marketers keen to place ads on
mobile phones, a tricky prospect since
the potential annoyance factor is so
high. Hoping to sell more of its Johnnie
Walker whisky in Singapore, liquor gi-
ant Diageo, with the help of OgilvyOne
Worldwide, created a "digital personal
assistant" for drinkers' mobile phones.
An avatar named "Jennie" sends out
VIP invitations, information about hot
night spots, and Johnnie Walker pro-
motions. For the inebriated, the service
includes a "take me home" button that,

A Rich Vein for

when pressed, uses GPS to call a cab.
Companies are even wrapping ads
around community outreach. Eager to
reinvigorate its image as a basketball
brand, Converse this fall began organiz-
ing games for Miami's inner-city youth.
Kids got to try out new shoes and meet
Miami Heat guard Dwyane Wade, who
signed autographs and refereed. The
program is moving to more cities and,
to get kids interested, Converse created
an application on Facebook that allows
people to sign up friends to play an
online basketball game. Converse says
it now has more than 40,000 people to
add to its database of potential custom-
ers, as well as information on where
they live. Now that's useful. 1BW1
LINKS
Can You Hear Me Now?
A recent issue of Contagious, a
British advertising trade magazine,
looks at Blyk, a mobile carrier that
gives free service to subscribers
who agree to receive several ads a
day. To better target ads and lure
advertisers, Blyk limits the offer to
16- to 24-year-olds who submit
personal profiles.
Reality Mining'
Researchers and companies are finding novel uses for
information extracted from cell-phone data
By Arik Hesseldahl
In the aftermath of the September 11
attacks, U.S. officials quickly turned
their attention to other potential
targets, including California's Golden
Gate Bridge. What would happen
if terrorists took down the bridge
between San Francisco and Marin
County? How much of the region
would be affected and for how long?
For insights, the Homeland Security
Dept. turned to a Microsoft spin-off
called Inrix. The startup analyzes data
from satellite navigation gear that's
widely installed on trucks and some
cars to produce real-time traffic infor-
mation, which it sells commercially.
Parsing years of stored traffic data us -
ing proprietary software, Inrix was able
to model not only the immediate im-
pact of a Golden Gate Bridge catastro-
phe, but also how drivers in the region
would work around it. In the model,
the Bay Area pulls off an amazingly
quick recovery. Within a few days,
drivers understand what is happening
and adapt to the new reality, says Inrix
Chief Executive Bryan Mistele.
The technique Inrix used is called
reality mining. It's a twist on data min-
ing that allows researchers to extract
information from the usage patterns
of mobile phones and other wireless
devices. Because these machines are
almost always switched on and are
constantly in contact with cellular base
stations, they produce a persistent
digital record of where the users are
going, how long they stay, and who
they come in contact with. Particu-

BUSINESSWEEK I MAY 5, 2008


larly when phones are equipped with
global positioning system chips, they
can generate precise location maps in
phone company databases. Such trails
are far more accurate than human
beings' subjective accounts of their
comings and goings.
The reality miners excel at dream-
ing up exotic applications. In addition
to helping cities prepare for possible
terrorist attacks, they have devised
ways to ease traffic congestion; helped
city planners find the best locations
for schools, hospitals, and conven-
tion centers; and enabled all types of
businesses—not least, phone compa-
nies—to improve customer service.
In the future, reality mining may also
allow health officials to track and con-
tain outbreaks of infectious diseases.
"There is so much societal good that
can come from this," says Alex "Sandy"
Pentland, a Massachusetts Institute
of Technology professor and reality
mining pioneer. "Suddenly we have the
ability to know what is happening with
the mass of humanity."
A MARKETING BONANZA
Signals among phones and base sta-
tions can be detected by commercial
sensing devices. But the detailed
records of who is calling whom belong
entirely to the phone companies. Right
now, they make little use of that data,
in part because they fear alienating
subscribers worried about privacy
infringement. But cellular operators
have begun signing deals with business
partners who are eager to market prod-
ucts based on specific phone users'
location and calling habits. If reality
WHAT CELLULAR SIGNALS REVEAL
ROAD DISEASE
CONGESTION OUTBREAKS
Reality miners Patterns in
derive real-time mobile-phone
traffic data by usage show
analyzing the whether large
density of cellular numbers of
signals on apartment
highways. dwellers are
staying home
from work or
visiting the ER.
mining catches on, phone companies'
calling records will become precious
assets. And these will only grow in
value as customers use their phones to
browse the Web, purchase products,
and update their Facebook pages — and
as marketers apply reality mining's
toolkit to these activities.
In academia, reality miners are
interested in applying the technol-
ogy to areas such as disease manage-
ment. Suppose health officials in a
city suspect passengers arriving at an
airport have been exposed to avian flu.
In the not-too-distant future, they
might be able to enlist cellular opera-
tors and use reality mining to monitor
clusters of individuals thought to be at
risk. Phone records could reveal that
an unusual number of passengers on
the flight are staying home from work
or are in the hospital. With further dig-
ging, officials could uncover a record
of contacts with taxi drivers, waiters,
even random people in a supermarket.
In such a crisis, the technology could
save lives. "It's one of the application
areas that [works] well both on the
individual and on large groups," says
Alex Kass, a researcher at consulting
firmAccenture.
Even in an imagined crisis, however,
such scenarios would raise red flags
among privacy advocates. Guilherme
Roschke, a staff attorney at the Elec-
tronic Privacy Information Center, a
nonprofit in Washington, D.C., wor-
ries whenever people are monitored
without their consent. "There is a lot
of new information being collected,
and it brings significant new capabili-
ties," he says. "Whenever it's put to a
Reality mining produces
a surfeit of useful data
SOCIAL GOOD
NETWORKS TEAMWORK
People who Wireless devices
spend the most produce records
time on mobile of where team
phones often members meet
influence how and how often.
others use such Lack of physical
devices. Phone proximity may
companies mean trouble is
treasure such brewing.
customers.
WHAT'S NEXT
Workplace Confidential
Do you really understand the group
dynamics at your company? A
branch of reality mining studies
"subtle signals" to see how people
get along and get things done.
Tones of voice, changes in facial
H
expression, and body language
may indicate that a team member is
running into trouble with his peers,
say, or that he's not fully engaged
while making a sales call. Writing in
the Aug. 29, 2007, issue of Booz
Allen Hamilton's strategy +
business, Mark Buchanan
describes how companies can use
electronic sensors to track such
signals, which may be below the
radar to bosses and co-workers.
new use, it must be disclosed."
Academic researchers acknowledge
the risks and have begun setting rules
for how data should be collected and
used. "Our first assumption is that
people own their own data," says MIT's
Pentland. But companies may find it
difficult to comply with the new rules.
Nathan Eagle, one of Pentland's MIT
colleagues, has access to a database
that holds an entire month's worth
of calling data for a whole European
country—he won't say which one.
The data set contains information on
250 million cell phones and land lines
and some 12 billion phone calls. For
research purposes, the data has been
scrubbed of all information that might
be used to identify individuals.
In Eagle's lab, which is funded partly
by Nokia, he and his colleagues use the
data to test the power of their algo -
rithms. They've observed phenomena
that may interest the phone companies
that own the unscrubbed data. For
example, each neighborhood has heavy
users who influence other people, say,
by proselytizing for new phone ap-
plications. Eagle says phone companies
can identify these "influencers," and
they'll bend over backwards to make
sure these subscribers don't jump to
rival carriers. "If someone who makes a
lot of calls walks away, there's a higher
potential that they'll take more people
along with them," Eagle says. 1 BW 1
MAY 5, 2008 I BUSINESSWEEK