A customer asked me recently if GeoCommons was a data market place. After giving it some thought my answer was no. GeoCommons is part of the Web. If you do a Google search for “Foursquare DC metro” you get data sets and maps from GeoCommons as a result:
We’ve pushed the OpenSearch+Geo standard and implemented it throughout Geocommons to keep the data Web aligned and discoverable. In my mind this is the core of what makes the Web work – discoverable information and increasingly the trend is to make the same information more portable and seamless. Even Facebook, arguably the largest walled garden of the Web, has made their user’s data portable.
Data market places come in a variety of flavors and colors, but I see few of them being Web aligned. Typically they are data silos with a gatekeeper sitting on top of them controlling access. Sometimes it is controlled through an API, often through a pay-wall or proprietary standards. Further complicating the matter are licensing terms around the data or service and the extent to which developers and enterprises can depend on it – “Pay for my data and delivery service, but I can yank that service any time I want and you can’t hold me responsible”. Take a careful look at those “Terms of Service” as they can be quite scary and have a massive impact on your application/company.
The problem I see is the data market place concept is growing like wildfire as the go-to business model – especially for geo companies. The result is a proliferation of data silos that are increasingly proprietary and closed because that is where companies hope to extract payment. As we lock down data we are going against the grain of the Web itself. Data is a commodity and creates the greatest economic multiplier when we treat it as a public good.
This does not mean all data should be without cost, but it should be free to flow across the Web. This also aligns with the enterprises we work with where the last thing they want is another gatekeeper they have to be dependent upon for information critical to their company. This is especially true when ToS’s don’t provide any contractual security to that dependency – a dangerous double fail. The billion dollar question is what’s the business model for all the interest being generated in LBS/Mobile/Social/Geo? I think the answer is going to require more value add than just data and POI’s.
6 Responses to The Problem with Data Market Places
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Typed and deleted two paragraphs after I realized I just restated what you had above. We still struggle with making the data available; and I would add usable where people are searching (major search engines). Few non-gis folks will search GeoCommons, even fewer will search an open state platform. OpenSearch+Geo remains one of our most relevant challenges
Thanks Learon – agree we have to bring the data to where the users are and not the other way around. The interesting thing to me is we’ve seen the geodata portal idea struggle in GIS and now watching the same idea get recycled for LBS/mobile/social.
Sean, timely post given the emergence of these market making portals; I have written about this somewhere in the GIS spehere but forget where right now. Anyhow, while you are right to flag up terms of service (make sure you read the SLA folks) our experience of these initiatives is the need for critical mass to gain traction. There will always be the odd ‘overlapping’ enquiry/demand for extant data sets but the portals business models are predicated on eyeballs, registrations and downloads and you can only get that if there is adequate content of interest to the target audience. If you build it they will come but only if the diamond is painted in, the bleachers occupied and the cameras rolling. Established portals have less of an issue generating the metrics owing to traction in high value markets; making it stick in other domains from a standing start irrespective of the search technology deployed. The open data portals are able to generate the interest and traction whether geo or otherwise and while we have already seen the emergence of value adding commercial services using these data sources (data cleansing, filtering, visualisation mashups et al), expect this to expand. There is of course a community that brings this to market at no charge whether the raw data or further up the value chain but, with so many of those seeking a ‘market’ expecting a ‘return’ first and foremost to themselves (with the public good a distant second), the challenge to market makers is to demonstrate the facility to deliver on that demand. Bit of a ramble..
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Sean, thanks for the link to my musings about OpenSearch.
Our blog URL for the Unlock services has changed, but hasn’t propagated well through the search indexes, if you could update the link to point to http://unlock.blogs.edina.ac.uk/2010/03/15/opensearch-geospatial/ it would be hugely appreciated.
Looking forward to seeing OpenSearch+Geo go through the OGC’s “fast-track” process now the spec has settled down – should check on the progress of that…
Hi Jo -
Thanks for the update – the link has been fixed. Andrew was on a Data Fusion working group at OGC and it was discussed there as well, so appears to be making good progress. Although I’m not sure where it officially stands in the process. Will double check. Keep us posted if you learn anything.