Who are we?

Zipano Technologies offers client organizations a unique user-controllable privacy platform based on technologies originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University’s Mobile Commerce Lab. This platform has been shown to be key to unlocking the full potential of a number of context-aware applications and services (e.g., location-based apps and services). Initial funding for Zipano has come from sources that include Innovation Works, the KIZ Program and Carnegie Mellon University.

 

Why did we start Zipano?

Industry is in the process of making a U-turn in how it looks at privacy in mobile and social networking applications. People have started to realize that, rather than being a nuisance, user privacy is in fact at the core of the value proposition. Zipano was founded to help companies such as mobile carriers, social networks, and other providers of context-aware platforms and applications respond to this fundamental shift.

"People want to feel that they can put something up and can control who sees it and if they want to take it down, they can do that. By giving people that control, we enable them to share more stuff. The debate about privacy is really a debate about control"

(Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook)

Companies such as Facebook were initially built on the premise that privacy did not matter. The users’ drive to share information about themselves trumped everything, or so was the thinking. Recently, these same companies have made a 180 degree turn and are now taking pride in exposing fine privacy settings to their users, even if at the cost of confusing them. Research behind Zipano’s technologies anticipated this U-turn. It showed that, contrary to popular belief, in many context-aware services and applications, privacy is at the core of the value proposition. Well designed privacy controls along with functionality that empowers users to effectively specify their unique privacy preferences results in more sharing and hence makes these services and applications more valuable. Zipano’s proprietary technology embedded in its unique User-Controllable Privacy Platform enables cell phone operators, device manufacturers, social networking sites as well as developers and aggregators of context aware applications and services to effectively monetize this insight.