Originally published July 6, 2011 at EnterpriseEfficiency.com
It’s easy to lose track of the many organizations that have access to extensive information about your personal browsing habits, including search engines, Internet service providers, employers, spyware makers, and secret government agencies that do not officially exist. But these data collectors tend to be parsimonious when it comes to sharing with you their compiled dossiers about you.
The solution is to spy on yourself. There are plenty of time tracking applications (e.g. ManicTime) out there that collect information to be stored locally on your own computer. And then there’s RescueTime, which differentiates itself by using a web service to store and analyze your browsing habits and application usage. Everything you do on a computer with the application installed is sent to RescueTime’s server and made available to you through a web-based interface.
Following the RescueTime installation, the site asks you for your top three most distracting and top three most productive activities. Your answers are used to suggest usage targets, such as “spend less than one hour per day on social networking sites” or “spend at least one hour per day commenting on Enterprise Efficiency.”
One benefit of tracking your time through a combined web service and application is that RescueTime can show you how your productivity stacks up against the average. Also, you don’t have to spend a lot of time classifying your activities. Because RescueTime can analyze the web traffic across its user base, it can better identify whether the sites you visit are for business or pleasure. That way, you don’t have to create your own whitelists and blacklists. You can simply review the list and tweak the exceptions as needed. This level of detail is made possible by the fact that RescueTime can see web traffic in aggregate and update its databases centrally.
For what it’s worth, RescueTime promises to protect your privacy. The way I figure it, there are enough entities out there that can or do peek over my shoulder and follow me around through location tracking, and so what’s the harm of one more company making such promises with my personal data?
And here’s the kicker: RescueTime has launched a new service, RescueTime Introductions, which essentially turns the Seattle-based company into a headhunting firm matching technology professionals to some prominent firms on the Web, including Dropbox, Justin.tv, SEOmoz, eBay, and Twitter.
Once RescueTime figures out how many hours per day you spend working, how well you can avoid distractions, and which are your favored tools and websites (not self-reported “favorites” but “favored” based on actual usage), the company will have amassed valuable information that can be used to find you a job. For example, suppose Twitter wanted to find someone with mobile web development experience. RescueTime would be able to come up with a list of people who regularly use the same toolset as the Twitter development team, who read the most important industry websites, and who have demonstrated a commitment to long hours and intense focus over months and years.
RescueTime maintains a small list of partner companies, but they have to be “cool” and “somewhere we’d consider working,” says Jason Grimes, VP of Marketing in the intro video. If a suitable match is found, RescueTime brokers an introduction with the accountholder’s permission.
Some questions:
Will RescueTime maintain its exclusive focus on “cool” web companies? I can understand that the company would want to be able to tell its partner firms (the hiring organizations) that they’re getting first pick of the cream of the crop. Surely, RescueTime wouldn’t want to have to tell Twitter that they’re all out of mobile developers because they placed the last one at an “uncool” insurance company.
But what if I’m a better fit for the insurance company? Does that mean I’m not cool enough to use RescueTime introductions? I would hope that as the RescueTime user base diversifies beyond early-adopter web developers, the company rethinks its approach to include introductions to top enterprise employers.
Would RescueTime be welcome in the enterprise? Would your firm allow browsing and application usage data to leave the company firewall? What would make you comfortable allowing this to happen?
Will companies that set up their employees on RescueTime have a better chance of getting picked as a “cool” company in the RescueTime Introductions program? Conversely, will companies that ban RescueTime within the firewall be relegated to “second pick” in the talent pool?
Would you be OK with using RescueTime Team Edition for your workgroup with the knowledge that any of them could opt-in to RescueTime Introductions? In exchange for productivity benefits, would you accept the chance that some big-shot web company might poach your smartest and hardest-working talent? Alternatively, would installing RescueTime be perceived as a benefit by your employees, in the sense that they feel that you’re not trying to hold them back?