Wouldn't it be nice to check your bank balance and bills next to your My Yahoo stock quotes and customized weather report?
If Atlanta-based start-up VerticalOne has its way, you'll be able to do just that. With US$12 million in seed funding to be announced Monday, the company plans to backend systems and start connecting the necessary Internet pipes.
"We believe the Internet is producing a new generation of content," said founder and CEO Gregg Freishtat. "The next generation of content is personal content, and that content has an audience of one."
Once in place, any Internet "destination site" -- a person's default home base on the Web -- would offer customers a single point of access to bank statements, credit-card balances, household bills, frequent-flyer status, and other similar information tied to personal accounts.
It saves time for the user who has to tap into multiple Web sites to check various accounts. For sites such as My Yahoo and My Excite, it's an added feature to draw users.
"I'm going to go to my place of comfort online -- My Yahoo, for example," said Freishtat. "While I'm at My Yahoo, I'm going to be able to see as a snapshot my Nation's Bank account and Delta frequent-flyer miles. Add to that, perhaps, how many minutes will be left on a personal cell-phone account.
"What we provide for a destination site is the ability to stand in the middle and touch a multitude of relationships.... We think the problem is that there is no infrastructure that is going to enable consumers to access this information."
To address that, VerticalOne has set up a backend data system for the transport of account information, such as balances. Since it will have to maintain some user account information, the company boasts a state-of-the-art data center with virtual private databases for each consumer's individual data.
But privacy advocates point out the vulnerability of any such centralized repository for information. Jason Catlett of privacy watchdog group Junkbusters calls it a "single point of failure."
"Some companies will offer more reassurance than others, but the fundamental trade-off is unavoidable: the greater the centralization, the greater the convenience and the greater the privacy risks," Catlett said.
"Whenever you are faced with this kind of trade-off decision, you have to ask yourself, 'Should I trust this company with this much information about me?'"
