Letter from Betaworks CEO: ‘Data is the New Plastic’
31 January, 2012 Category: Silicon Alley No Comments 
Original post by Madelyn Martin via BETABEAT
And more from the state of Betaworks, as per a leaked letter to shareholders.
Mr. Borthwick. (betaworks.com)
Our apologies to evangelists of gamification and QR codes, but 2012 is all about data—at least according to New York startup non-incubator Betaworks. “We know the importance of understanding big data,” Betaworks CEO John Borthwick wrote in a confidential letter leaked to PandoDaily on Saturday. “Data is the new plastic. The network is both the frame and the metaphor we are building towards and on. This network-centric model is core to betaworks, and a key competitive advantage.”
Three of Betaworks’ most successful companies—Bitly, Chartbeat and SocialFlow—capitalize on the ever-elusive ROI of social media, attempting to quantify the impact of the “social web” in which they believe so mightily.
Data does seem to be a rapidly developing theme in 2012, as Betabeat deftly pointed out in our 2012 Tech Predictions piece. Numberfire, a data science app for fantasy sports, raised $650k in seed funding earlier this month, while Visual Revenue scored $1.7M for technology that doesn’t just report web traffic data, but predicts it.
