@kwdinc I signed up, but I got a message saying that I've been added to the waitlist and will get access in 82 weeks (unless I invite friends), that just seems like a ludicrous wait-list time to tell a user imho. The app looks cool apart from that

@_jacksmith @kwdinc Hey Jack, good hearing from you! I still remember our discussion in the comment section when we first got covered on TC. Awesome to reconnect now that we're live! Regarding the 82 weeks, this wait time will definitely go down quite soon. Let me explain: right now, we're only letting on 1K users off the waitlist every 4 weeks. We do this since we want to guarantee a certain threshold of liquidity in the marketplace, meaning that we can control how many people will get paid every month. We've seen quite a bit of interest from the user side (the supply side), and we want to make sure that when your account is live on DW, you actually get paid. This also means, however, that we have to balance supply and demand - and that requires that we limit the amount of users that are admitted to the marketplace, at least for the very early stages of it. We could have taken a similar approach to other companies in the same space that simply take your raw data and sell it (e.g. to data brokers). This would have allowed us to sell the data a lot quicker, let a lot more users onto the platform, and get more people paid. But we decided against it. The reason behind that is that we wanted to guarantee the users of our app that their data is as secure as possible -- which we wouldn't have been able to if we simply did a 'wholesale' to other data providers. This makes things a lot harder on our side, since we had to build out a proprietary analytics platform, as well as an enterprise sales side. With our current model, the 'data buyers' don't actually get to buy your data, but only anonymized insights that we generate about it. I get that the wait times are annoying, but from my perspective, this is the only way to sustainably change how data brokerage works (since it doesn't simply feed the current model with better data). However, the more enterprise customers we add, the more users we'll be able to allow full access to the marketplace each month. I can't say for sure by how much we'll increase the acceptance rate and when, but we're already seeing strong demand from enterprise customers, and I'm sure we'll be able to increase it substantially in the next weeks.

@serafinlion ah yes. I remember. So looking back at my comment then; it looks like I said I signed up for the beta a year ago - what happened to the account that I created a year ago? Do I get ahead on the waitlist for that? RE the wait time: I get what you're saying, but it in terms of weeks is really off-putting (see other comments on this thread as well). Instead, a more natural wording, that other apps use is along the lines of: - "hey, you're 123,000 in the wait list (or there are 60,000 people ahead of you), we're currently letting in 1000 users a month, but will increase that soon. In the meantime if you want to jump up the queue, you can refer some friends"

@_jacksmith good call! We'll definitely fine tune the wording. Regarding the account you created previously: you should have received an email about the DW launch, addressing you with the username you had previously created -- if you signed up using Facebook, you'll have received this email to the one you used when you created your FB account. If you then go to the DW app, you can simply claim the name again, and information such as amount of referrals and your place in the waitlist will transfer over.

@serafinlion I have an email from November 2015 saying "Thank you for signing up for DataWallet", but I never got any email about your launch. when I downloaded the app just now it created me a new acount with the same email address

@_jacksmith How long did it take to earn that much?

@zefareu about 18 months. I just left it running in the background and have gradually withdrawn money from it

@_jacksmith well, to be really precise, it's not really "doing nothing". you can count on some kind of annoying ads / spam that will either cost you time or will trick you to pay the at least the money you got or even more. Don't misunderstand me though, the idea and approach isn't bad, but i only see use for it for people who don't have another choice.

@thelambostory I've been using it for 18+ months as I said, and not had an annoying ads or spam or anything of that nature. Not sure how they'd be able to spam me anyway, as the person buying my data doesn't get my email address or mailing address as far as I'm aware.

@nekitperes @_jacksmith I used them in Germany for a while and have earned 23 dollars until they sadly closed their service for non-USA customers. I just wanted to withdraw the money as the last time I earned something was June 2015, but it appears you can only withdraw to American debit cards :/

@sahilc0 @serafinlion yes please :-) Also, is it just for US? Is there a European version planned?

@nathanaelkhodl yup, we're still working on that one :D

@serafinlion 83 weeks, really? @kwdinc

@narayananh @kwdinc hey Narayanan, I know, it's a lot at the moment. I just responded in a bit more detail to Jack's post above to explain the reason behind it. We'll increase the monthly acceptance rate, soon.

@serafinlion I did read that, thanks for the explanation. I have noticed a lot of apps giving PH users a quicker way to get in. Is something like that possible?

@eindbaas Hey Stefan, it's true that using DataWallet won't simply shut down data the supply from other companies and make you the exclusive supplier of your own data. At least not immediately -- it's a huge industry and can only be changed step by step. However, it is the case that 'data buyers' have a certain budget which they set aside to purchase data. When you sell your own data (or in the case of DataWallet it's insights about your data), you can make data available that is off bounds for data brokers - e.g. your Likes on Facebook. This data offers vastly more valuable insights than the data that data brokers can offer (which is data that is either publicly available or licensed to them via 3rd party agreements), so it's in the interest of the 'data buyers' to buy it via you (through DataWallet). When a company decides to use DataWallet, and you get paid for your own data, you are effectively 'reclaiming' the profits made with your data, since the money for it was taken from a budget that would have otherwise been allocated to a different company that would have made these profits instead of you. What other ways do you think we could drive this concept across that would be less sketchy?

@serafinlion This explanation is heaps better than the landing page. But surely you can't really think it'll replace the other means of data collection by companies completely, do you? If people really want to sell their data: to each their own. I just think the current landing page is misleading.

@eindbaas To be honest, I don't just think that it'll replace other means of data collection, I'm convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that it will. E.g. public data from Facebook only accounts for roughly 19% of all data you create. And that fraction encompasses mostly demographic dimensions such as your age and hometown. The really valuable insights lie in the 81% of the data that the companies currently sourcing your data cannot access. Data Brokers can never sell better data than you, meaning that when you bring your own data to the market, this will by definition always be the best data available. There's no need for marketers to buy anything anymore, but the data you make available yourself.