+--------------------------+---------------+ | country | country_count | +--------------------------+---------------+ | United States | 403585 | | United States of America | 201800 | | USA | 127270 | | Canada | 88615 | | United Kingdom | 77154 | | Great Britain | 41376 | | Australia | 27648 | | Germany | 25266 | | Spain | 23312 | | France | 22422 | | UK | 16280 | | Netherlands | 15488 | | Ireland | 15439 | | New Zealand | 12391 | | Belgium | 9648 | | Italy | 9608 | | Deutschland | 9600 | | Switzerland | 9281 | | Mexico | 8866 | | US | 8351 | | Denmark | 7044 | | India | 6302 | | Brazil | 5835 | | Sweden | 5662 | | China | 5139 | | Poland | 4963 | | South Africa | 4894 | | Schweiz | 4514 | | Japan | 4168 | | Singapore | 4141 | | Norway | 4125 | | Austria | 3793 | | England | 3434 | | Hong Kong | 3422 | | United Arab Emirates | 3410 | | Thailand | 2705 | | Israel | 2598 | | U.S.A. | 2496 | | Portugal | 2491 | | Russian Federation | 2360 | | Costa Rica | 2337 | | Philippines | 2269 | | Viet Nam | 2142 | | Jordan | 1973 | | Nederland | 1928 | | Finland | 1848 | | Brasil | 1804 | | Argentina | 1750 | | Turkey | 1713 | | Peru | 1488 | | Malaysia | 1481 | | The Netherlands | 1433 | | Russia | 1398 | | Greece | 1144 | | Chile | 1142 | | Romania | 1106 | | Danmark | 1063 | | België | 1056 | | Ukraine | 1048 | +--------------------------+---------------+
For example, there are 1481 people in the Highrise contact database from Malaysia, 3422 from Hong Kong, 23,312 from Spain, etc.
Note: People can enter whatever they want in the country field which is why some enter USA, some United States, and some United States of America.
Nathan Clark
on 04 Nov 08I have a one of those Malaysians in my system (and a few more coming). You know, it would be great if I could map either my entire database or at least a group (like the Malaysians) so I could get a better visual context, especially for geography I’m less familiar with.
Gabriel
on 04 Nov 08Very unreliable stats, since there are multiple references to the same country, like “United States”, “United States of America”, “US, “USA” and “U.S.A.”... “Germany” and “Deutschland”... “Brazil” and “Brasil”.
Anonymous Coward
on 04 Nov 08Gabriel, Jason said that at the end. Did you read the post?
Bill Carroll
on 04 Nov 08The stats are interesting, but I have a comment. I’m a fan of 37signals, so please don’t take this the wrong way. But I have to ask.
Did we agree in our licensing to people going through our data? Do you stop at looking over addresses, or is there other info 37signals staff combs through. I’d like a little more of an illusion of security with regards to our data in Highrise.
I’m not trying to start anything here, but I would like a thoughtful and truthful answer.
Jeff
on 04 Nov 08Since Canada is technically #3, how about a Canadian currency option for the Deals in Highrise?
..Although I’m sure it’s on its way.
JF
on 04 Nov 08Bill, we’re not looking at your data, this is aggregate country data pulled from the database. No one’s personal data is being reviewed or exposed or scrutinized or in any way compromised. This is faceless automated aggregate data.
merle
on 04 Nov 08Faceless maybe. Definitely tacky.
Jeremy
on 04 Nov 08So I walk up to your house, look in the window. I take an inventory of everything I see. Repeat for everyone on your block.
If I report on just the quantity of HD TVs, this is okay?
Karel Minarik
on 04 Nov 08Jason, I’d be interested in the process of thoughts for the decision to store country as an arbitrary text (“string” for the techies :), not as some code, reference, anything which is “data-consistent”.
I imagine you want the data insertion to be as flexible/quick as possible. I also imagine it’s because you regard a `` menu as something techy, hard to operate? But then there’s the cost where you cannot easily aggregate such data. How did you come to such decision, if it’s not impertinent to ask? (I struggle with things like that daily, so I am wondering…)
Karel
Karel Minarik
on 04 Nov 08Eh, [select] was eaten .)
Nate Klaiber
on 04 Nov 08Why not standardize the country field in some fashion? I find a DB structure like this pretty useless, even with a Getting Real approach to things. So many different possible spellings and abbreviations, that it doesn’t tell you anything – unless you take another step to try and match everything up.
Then again, if you aren’t really using it for much of anything – then I guess it doesn’t matter – just doesn’t make sense to have data like that. You can’t draw conclusions off of something like this.
Paul Smith
on 04 Nov 08I agree with merle and Jeremy. I know it doesn’t really mean much, but for some reason it just feels… funny. I’d be ok if you only looked at the account owners info for internal use, but past that… I dunno.
Ben Tucker
on 04 Nov 08I was curious about the the data privacy implications of this (as I see others were as well). I’m not a 37s customer and personally don’t really see anything wrong with providing these types of stats, but I was interested to see if the Highrise privacy policy/TOS shed any light on what rights 37s reserved and which it doesn’t.
Interestingly there’s nothing I can find that explicitly gives 37s the right to publish aggregate stats based on customers’ data. It looks like they reserve the right to compile stats on customers themselves, but not on the data they own. Even sharing of data about customers is restricted to legal requirements & improving the service, no where does it mention marketing that I can find.
Google I think made a good decision when they made aggregate data sharing an ‘Opt-in’ preference in Google Analytics. Perhaps that’s a good model?
Anonymous Coward
on 04 Nov 08Guys, this is a LIST OF COUNTRIES! Get over it. Nothing remotely sensitive has been released or shared! Jesus!
Bill
on 04 Nov 08Thanks for the answer re: data privacy. Privacy is always a big question as more and more of us put our data into the cloud.
Fact is I never read the privacy policy, TOS, or licensing agreement before signing up, so I suppose I could have agreed to anything. I’m probably not alone on this, although some might be more reluctant to admit it.
Ed
on 04 Nov 08Get over it chaps! You can’t do anything ‘dodgy’ with a list of countries.
I think 37s chose a freeform field because of the example above: Germany and Deutschland, they mean the same thing, just different languages. Also select boxes add sooooo much HTML code to a page!
Rida Al Barazi
on 04 Nov 08It’s very interesting to see that UAE and Jordan are the only Arabic-speaking countries in the list..
Joshua Go
on 04 Nov 08A freeform country field also frees up the listing from political considerations: what if you had a contact in Kosovo, Taiwan, or South Ossetia? The Rails country listing would have a hard time with this.
gwg
on 04 Nov 08It’s interesting to me how many people are raising the privacy flag.
leethal
on 04 Nov 08Meh, you guys. It’s just a sql query. How can they possibly gain any insight in your personal data from one sql query that generates this list?
Tim
on 04 Nov 08I have to second the sentiment about it being unethical to look at the data in any way shape or form.
I realize people are saying this is just country data and it’s not looking specially at any particular Highrise customer but nonetheless, you still are looking at customer data.
Customer data is an interesting thing. What some people might consider garbage, others find it to be the core of their business.
I can guarantee you that if some major hosting providers like EDS or ACS were to look at anyway it’s customers data, it would be a HUGE Wall Street Journal headline and they would be out of business in the matter of days.
J
on 04 Nov 08Tim, this isn’t “customer data” it’s a list of countries of the world. There’s nothing you can do with this data to call anyone’s privacy or security into question. If you can, please post it here so we can see the violation of “ethics”. I’m curious.
J
on 04 Nov 08...and I forgot to add… Hosting, commerce, and data companies of all sizes often share location-based data… “We have customers in 60 countries around the world” or “30% of our customers are based in the US, 25% are based in the UK” etc. That information is based on “customer data” but of course there’s nothing at all sensitive about that data just like there’s nothing sensitive of sharing a list of countries of the world and a statistical breakdown of frequency.
Put your tin hat away.
Berserk
on 04 Nov 08Next: Hey, I didn’t agree with you publishing how I voted in the election!? That is private information. So what if it’s aggregated, I’m in there for crying out loud. Please remove my vote from your aggregate data.
</sarcasm>
bobby1234
on 04 Nov 08Hey if you choose to keep your data in third party hands (I do) then you are trusting them. 1 to no mess it up and accidently release it and 2 not to give it to a third party.
This is statistical data not personal data. They could easily have said that 60% of contacts are male or 50% are paid accounts… statistical. No personal info. Oh and they ain’t collected it by browsing it. It is automated. same way google uses targeted ads.
Scott Johnson
on 04 Nov 08Sure, this is just country data, but what data is 37s searching through that they don’t post on their blog? Just feels wrong to me…
Bill
on 04 Nov 08As many have pointed out, nobody really cares if you post the countries by number of contacts, of your contact’s contacts :) At least I don’t care. What I’m not keen on is anyone looking at my e-mails, notes, and other information associated with my contacts.
I’m not sure I’m OK with 37Signals posting that I, their contact, has a customer in Colorado. Heck, I really don’t really want anyone poking around in our contacts and data period.
It is another issue entirely to say I am 37signal’s “contact” and they can say they have a customer in Boulder, CO USA.
I’m not upset, or wearing a tinfoil hat (at the moment), but I do want to bring up my basic concerns for discussion.
Bill
on 04 Nov 08I can has contacts? ^
Man, my grammar and spelling can really be suspect at times :)
Puto
on 04 Nov 08It’s not about what somebody can or can’t do with the data. When you have somebody else’s data, it’s not up to your “common sense” whether it’s important enough to keep secret. It’s somebody else’s data, so it shouldn’t be released period. Who are you to say that the CIA doesn’t have data in there. I’m drafting an article about this post. I work for the New York Times. If I can get this on the site, it’ll be great.
Jeff (again)
on 05 Nov 08Wow, took less than 6 hours for a Canadian currency option to be added to Deals in Highrise (since my post above).
Thanks guys!
MichalT
on 05 Nov 08I tried compiling the data so that repeated countries’ data is presented as a total, here’s the (quite obvious) top 10:
United States – 743502 (66%)
United Kingdom – 138244 (12%)
Canada – 88615 (8%)
Germany – 34866 (3%)
Australia – 27648 (2%)
Spain – 23312 (2%)
France – 22422 (2%)
Netherlands – 18849 (2%)
Ireland – 15439 (1%)
Switzerland – 13795 (1%)
The percent values are only of the total of contacts from the 10 countries listed above.
MichalT
on 05 Nov 08BTW, if you compiled the data (like I did above) instead of posting a raw query result dump, I imagine that there would be far less privacy-related comments here.
Chris Boulton
on 05 Nov 08Good to know that 37s is looking at all of my data.
The issue here isn’t the list of countries (for me at least), it’s the fact that this proves there is some sort of data mining/querying going on. What other statistics are you generating from my data for your own internal use/viewing pleasure?
This is statistical data pulled from my personal data. Who’s to say it isn’t being browsed? Once again – it’s the fact that this is happening that’s concerning.Ola Berg
on 05 Nov 08Percent of population stored in Highrise:
Ireland, 15,439/4,422,100 = 0.349% Canada, 88,615/33,420,300 = 0.265% United States, 743,502/305,579,000 = 0.243% United Kingdom, 138,244/61,186,000 = 0.226% Switzerland, 13,795/7,169,000 = 0.192% Australia, 27,648/21,477,571 = 0.129% Netherlands, 18,849/16,464,600 = 0.114% Spain, 23,312/46,063,500 = 0.051% Germany, 34,866/82,169,000 = 0.042% France, 22,422/64,473,140 = 0.035%
Ola Berg
on 05 Nov 08Percent of population stored in Highrise:
Ireland, 15,439/4,422,100 = 0.349%
Canada, 88,615/33,420,300 = 0.265%
United States, 743,502/305,579,000 = 0.243%
United Kingdom, 138,244/61,186,000 = 0.226%
Switzerland, 13,795/7,169,000 = 0.192%
Australia, 27,648/21,477,571 = 0.129%
Netherlands, 18,849/16,464,600 = 0.114%
Spain, 23,312/46,063,500 = 0.051%
Germany, 34,866/82,169,000 = 0.042%
France, 22,422/64,473,140 = 0.035%
Anne Marie Messier
on 05 Nov 08These stats highlight the fact that localization would help 37signals gain customers ! I love the products and use them in many different ways but I’m always sad to have to impose english to my teams and customers….
Tim
on 05 Nov 08If 37s wants to share where I am from as a customer, that is completely different from where My customers/contacts are from. The point by J regarding companies using stats as a marketing item refers to the former data not the later. 37s – if you want to go into your billing database for Highrise and pull out where your customers are from go right ahead – that is your data. But stay out of “My Contacts” in Highrise – that is my data.
mandydog
on 05 Nov 08as the field is free form it can hardly be called ‘data’ at all. Get nearer to the bottom of the table, how many trekkies entered ‘Vulcan’..... ;)
John Topley
on 05 Nov 08How would you feel if 37signals were mining the data as a way of improving the user experience or performance of the applications?
JF
on 05 Nov 08What other statistics are you generating from my data for your own internal use/viewing pleasure?
We don’t look at your data unless there’s a problem with your account and you contact support. As part of that support request we may have to log into your account to fix a problem or see what you are seeing in order to diagnose the problem, but we’re not mining anything or browsing your data for our gain or curiosity. There is no gain or curiosity.
We may look at trends in data or usage patterns to help us make decisions about the product or how we can improve performance or the user experience. For example, the country query was used to determine which currencies we should support, and in which order we should display them, in the new Deals feature. We thought people might find the aggregate country distribution interesting so we shared it. No private data connected to any account was shared.
A big part of our business is based on trust. If people don’t trust us we can’t stay in business. We obviously take that trust very seriously.
Jean-Pierre Bobbaers
on 05 Nov 08The (upset) comments about the privacy cannot be just turned down or minimalised by 37s . It is not the LITTLE piece of information you communicate, it is about ALL the little pieces that are here and there communicated over the internet and the real world. And you communicate ONE little piece of that puzzle.. WRONG, NOT GOOD !
I am a Belgian user. Let’s say that some country “competitor/boss” tells me that he uses Highrise (we love to show off technology to each other :-), and I of course know, he is Flemish and doesn’t operate in English.
Conclusion: Aaaaaah, he has 1056 contacts in his Highrise, because I don’t think their is any other person in this country that will fill in “België” (in Dutch)
Of course I can’ t do ANYTHING with that piece of information.
Next day their is one of his emplyeees that applies for a job at our company. He claims that 10% of his “online database” are customers that will follow him when he changes job.
If I glue that together with the boss statement and your data you released.. BINGO , I know how many…
I know my example is silly and highly unlikely BUT I just want to show the force of little pieces.
I use Google every day to glue little pieces together, and ohhhh boy…......
Do NOT release little or ANY customer info is the lesson !
That’s why readers here got upset.
DHH
on 05 Nov 08I’m genuinely surprised at the feedback and I think feeling is shared by the rest of the 37signals team. None of us suspected this level of statistics would cause any concern for anyone. But it has and that’s real.
So for us the take-away is definitely that people are very sensitive about even the perception that analytics or people are surveying their data. That’ll no doubt factor into how we choose to share statistics in the future.
We like to be as open as possible, sharing as much as we can. But I certainly respect that when it comes to instances like this that there’s the potential to make some feel uncomfortable. That was never the intention and we’ll learn from that.
Thanks to everyone who shared their opinion on this.
sham
on 05 Nov 08I can’t enter anything I want in the country field – it’s a drop-down list. Surely my version of Highrise isn’t unique. Where is this free-form country field the original post is talking about?
Emil
on 07 Nov 08I’ve almost never used the country field as I live in Sweden and most of my contacts does. If I haven’t filled in the country I assume they live in Sweden. Isn’t this a default behaviour or am I doing something unique? ;)
J. Holstein
on 07 Nov 08A business partner pointed me to this post, as I had been advocating 37signals in the past. He insisted that I pull his data from Highrise. To make it short: I told our tech guy and my assistant to prepare the move from 37signals, collect all data etc. What irony: We, a 100% mac + rails outfit are considering moving to Sharepoint and Exchange for centralized customer data and intranet.
This discussion is closed.