I've known about RapLeaf for quite some time. The company provides a metric shit ton of data about, well, us. That's right, it knows a whole hell of a lot about us and it's surprisingly accurate in what it knows. They might explain somewhere on their site just exactly how they do it, but let's be honest: we put a whole hell of a lot of information about ourselves online nowadays and the rest of the information is pretty much for sale to the highest bidder due to the choices we make and companies we choose to interact with.

Recently I was pinged by RapLeaf to let me know about a new service they are getting ready to roll out called Instant Data. The concept is pretty simple - you upload a list of email addresses and it spits out a cool summary of detailed information about your users. As a developer I was impressed with how it actually is instant. After you upload the list it will actually show you charts which update in real time as it processes the information.

Here is the output of a list of about 18,000 emails that I uploaded. In total it took maybe 7-10 seconds to finish the entire report.

The service also offers a detailed download which provides a number of different metrics, but as you can imagine there is a catch. If RapLeaf has a certain piece of information about a user (like home value, marital status, etc) via their email address the detailed report simply shows 'Data Available'. Their FAQ states:

"In addition, if you have a paid subscription to our paid "Premium" package, you will be able to use InstantData to get Premium information -- presence of children, income, marital status, homeowner status, home market value, home property type, and length of residence."

The email I received from RapLeaf stated "feedback suggests that we're going to change the world of consumer data with this product" which is a bold claim indeed. I'm not quite sure I agree that the service is that game changing, but it definitely provides valuable market research to online content providers looking to understand more about the people who use their products and services.

As a final note I wanted to mention that RapLeaf used to provide quite a bit of social data about a user via their API but it seems they've shifted their focus away from that arena. It's too bad too because as the social media industry continues to explode I'm sure the ability to tie all your social identities together via that API would have provided for some interesting mashup opportunities.