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FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers

blog.maptia.com

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Re: FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers

#3

Wasnt this the same thing someone was blogging about a few days ago and refused to use it because of the creepy way it tracked everyone?

No. Full Contact cross-references an email address to publicly available information. Full Contact basically just automates a legitimate public search on information shared with intent between a user and a site owner.

The things that caused fury (and rightly so) the other day were a handful of tracking systems that use a single cookie across multiple sites (some with contact info) to break anonymity for the any site in the network. So the user think they're anonymous, but they are in fact personally identifiable to the site owner.

BIG difference.

Re: FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers

#6

Wasnt this the same thing someone was blogging about a few days ago and refused to use it because of the creepy way it tracked everyone?

No. Full Contact cross-references an email address to publicly available information. Full Contact basically just automates a legitimate public search on information shared with intent between a user and a site owner. The things that caused fury (and rightly so) the other day were a handful of tracking systems that use a single cookie across multiple sites (some with contact info) to break anonymity for the any site…

I see, thanks for the correction.

Re: FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers

#7
Its very hit and miss, not something I would build a service around. In my circle of 4 friends, it only had data on one of us.

One big flaw is that you can't provide multiple sources of data as the basis of a search. Eg no phone AND email, only o ne at a time.

Re: FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers

#8

Its very hit and miss, not something I would build a service around. In my circle of 4 friends, it only had data on one of us. One big flaw is that you can't provide multiple sources of data as the basis of a search. Eg no phone AND email, only o ne at a time.

4 people isn't exactly statistically significant. FullContact averages a 60% match rate to at least one social profile. Let me know if you find anything better.

It's an API. You could run two separate calls and then merge, or run the excel macro with two separate files and merge. We plan to have multiple queries in the future.

Re: FullContact API gives marketing superpowers to growth hackers

#10

Wasnt this the same thing someone was blogging about a few days ago and refused to use it because of the creepy way it tracked everyone?

No. Full Contact cross-references an email address to publicly available information. Full Contact basically just automates a legitimate public search on information shared with intent between a user and a site owner. The things that caused fury (and rightly so) the other day were a handful of tracking systems that use a single cookie across multiple sites (some with contact info) to break anonymity for the any site…

Probably not a big difference to the large majority of people who are not aware this information is public.

A useful tool to be sure, companies should just be careful how they use it.

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