Skydeck is no longer a secret
We’ve been writing about the cell phone market at the Skydeck blog for almost a year without ever saying what Skydeck plans to do. That’s been pretty frustrating, since what we’re working on has implications for many of the problems that we’ve talked about here.
Skydeck still hasn’t launched — you need an invitation to join our beta test — but as of today we’re no longer a secret.
Skydeck is building an online service that will help people to take control of their cell phones and their cell phone bills.
First, we’re unlocking the valuable information hidden in your cell phone bill.
Add the Skydeck toolbar to your browser and we will fetch your cell phone bill each month and turn that dry list of numbers into a rich history of your conversations with friends, co-workers, and customers. For the first time you can search your call history as easily as you search your email; figure out where your money goes; and see your true social network, the people that you talk to and text every day. We think you’ll start to Love Your Phone Bill.
It’s your data — a record of every phone call you make and every text message you send, all the services you bought, and how much you paid for all of it. Your cell phone company uses it to market new services to you. The NSA uses it to figure out if you’re a threat to national security. If you work for a large company that pays for your cell phone, they may have programmatic access to your data and can see how you’ve been spending your time. It seems that everybody except you has access to your data. That’s where Skydeck come in.
Think about how much money is at stake. It’s not at all unusual for a family in this country to spend $3,000 on cell phones and service every year, and we know many individual consumers who spend that much or more. Are you getting value for money? Do you have any way of knowing? The answer is also hidden in your cell phone bill, and Skydeck will help you with that too. For starters, the Skydeck toolbar includes a meter that checks your minutes and text messages once a day so that you don’t have to. This alone means that you should never get a surprise bill again.
We’ve adopted a privacy policy that sets a new standard for this industry, clearly establishing that you own this data and we do not. And our security practices are more like a financial services company than a cell phone company.
We’re very excited about Skydeck and we look forward to helping you. To join our beta test, enter your email here. We’ll send you an invitation as soon as possible.
On behalf of the whole Skydeck team, I’d like to thank everyone who has helped us get to this point.