You've heard this mantra before: “Location, location, location.” There's a new player in town called PlaceBook, and if it is to be believed, the proper mantra should be “privacy, privacy, privacy.”
PlaceBook—yes, the name brings to mind a certain, 500-million-user-strong social network, but more on that later—is a product by PublicEarth, a company that has reshaped its business plan and relocated from Boulder, Colorado, to Menlo Park, California. PlaceBook is poised to break into the location-based services market within a few weeks, and, according to CEO Michael Rubin, with a vengeance.
“PlaceBook is all about the privacy of location data," said Rubin. "I have been watching this space for a long time, and many of the companies are cavalier with users' location data, how they store it, how they use it, and so on. We believe that users want to be private by default and social by action, not the other way around.”
So, PlaceBook aims to be an opt-in service, where users will have tremendous control over their location data and how it is shared. Rubin explained that he is all about sharing and transparency, but with a distinction: “I believe that I can benefit if my laptop knows my location, but that doesn't mean I necessarily want to share my location with just anybody I happen to meet.”
But just what does PlaceBook do, or rather, enable users to do? Rubin is vague, as the company is still in stealth mode, awaiting launch. A press release says the service will use personal GPS data for “weight loss and fitness, healthier living, and trip planning.”
The service will also provide a way to “manage and organize map-based information”, and does all this with the tagline of “Your life, by location.”
Which brings us to the name. According to Rubin, it was debated within the company (the domain was registered back in 2000) but, at the end of the day, it fits the product. “We wanted it to be real words, not something with seven L's in the title or whatever,” Rubin chuckles. And, at its core, PlaceBook is just that: a metaphorical “book” of places, a personal atlas of locations, Rubin says.
He is also confident that once people experiment with the service (the site is currently in beta mode) there will be no confusing it with Facebook—which, by contrast, has been pretty cavalier about its privacy implications.
At any rate, PlaceBook will have other considerations than just a name that rhymes with an established service. The location space is teeming with players and differentiating from them will be a daunting task. Rubin has confidence in the team, which has members from Netflix and eBay, among others. Rubin himself joined PublicEarth from Netflix last year and was charged with reshaping the company from a location database project to putting out a more consumer-facing product.
The company originally raised $3 million to fund the location database development, and managed to raise another million dollars this year which will enable the company to launch their product. There will be more fundraising for the years 2011-2012, but, says Rubin, the company is “cool for now.” Let's see if the company will turn hot as they launch.