Intel Capital has led a Series B funding round in Sense Networks, a NY-based developer of nifty machine-learning technology that allows for digital indexing and ranking of real world locations based on movement data. According to Venturebeat, which broke the news before the weekend, the amount invested was about $6 million in a ‘hotly contested deal’ that left Sequoia pulling the short straw.
Having recently witnessed a panel discussion at the Mobile 2.0 Europe conference on ‘Context’, which Sense Networks CEO Greg Skibiski was a part of, I’d wager it’s a smart investment. The startup has developed Macrosense, a so-called ‘location analytics platform’ specifically designed to mine mobile location data for advanced user segmentation, and it also markets a really great free mobile app for BlackBerry and the iPhone platform called Citysense that enables ‘real-time nightlife discovery and social navigation’. In essence, the latter app helps consumers find popular nightlife spots using large amounts of real-time location data in aggregate.
From Erick’s review when the company first emerged out of stealth mode:
“The company ingests billions of data points about people’s location from cell phones, GPS devices, WiFi, and even taxis. The company also collects geo-location data from everyone who downloads Citysense, or any future app (although, the company considers the data to be yours, and you can delete it from the database at any time).
Using machine-learning algorithms, it then indexes all of this location data and ranks places in the real world much like a search engine ranks Websites. But instead of looking at Web links, it looks at how much data (i.e., people) are moving between locations. The company makes money by selling this data in the aggregate to professional investors and financial institutions, who are keen to find out things like where people are shopping.”
Sense Networks was founded by MIT computer scientist Alex Pentland and Columbia computer scientist Tony Jebara back in May, 2003. The company was only incorporated in 2006, though, and it went on to raise a Series A round from a number of angel investors and hedge funds like Passport Capital, Drobny Global Asset Management and the Challenge Funds in April 2008. The amount was not disclosed, but VentureWire reported that it was $3 million, which means total funding for the company now stands at about $9 million.
So it gives an idea of which club has the biggest queue? Awesome.
@eric
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That’s would be very nice!
One of the good ideas to get funded.
Would have to look how other companies can use this information . If we want to get the location of user and deliver my own ads, can sense networks give this data through API or something ?
Not sure if that is the direction Sense is going in, but this is what we are doing at Xtify.
This would be useful to detect zombies
zombies with BB’s ofcourse
nice,That’s would be very good!
The trick of aggregating mobile phone locations has also been applied by TomTom (navigation devices) in the Netherlands to detect and present traffic jams while on the road.
Of course it would be great to have a more generic platform for this kind of information for other applications, so looking forward to when Citysense comes to Europe
Way to go, Greg! Congrats to the entire Sense team
Location-based services could be delievered to mobile phone users deploying Sense Networks´ technology.
I like the product – it is innovative.
Thumbs up!
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Not sure if that is the direction Sense is going in
Of course it would be great to have a more generic platform for this kind of information for other applications, so looking forward to when Citysense comes to Europe