Open Data Now: The Secret to Hot Startups, Smart Investing, Savvy Marketing, and Fast Innovation

CHAPTER SEVEN

Savvy Marketing: How Reputational Data Defines Your Brand

I’M WRITING THIS CHAPTER ON AN ULTRABOOK LAPTOP THAT I acquired by gambling. I didn’t win it in a poker game, a raffle, or a bet. I bought it used on eBay.

Gambling? Think about it: I authorized a chunk of money to go to someone I’d never met, for a preowned machine that I’d never seen, described in a way that I couldn’t verify. I knew that eBay’s Buyer Protection Policy offered me some backup if things went wrong. But that policy involves going through a resolution process with no guarantee of the outcome—not the same as simply being able to return a laptop to the store where you bought it.

Fortunately, my gamble worked out fine, as I expected it would. The deciding factor ...