Sense Networks Answers the Question, “Where’s The Party At?”

NY-based Sense Networks is launching their initial public alpha today around their Citysense product. The idea for SenseNetworks came to founder and CEO Greg Skibiski while he was traveling in Barcelona. I spoke with Skibiski to learn more about SenseNetworks and the CitySense product. The alpha is available for San Francisco and a variety of other cities are collecting data for later availability.

The company started operations on their technology in 2002 and the idea was to build a system which leveraged all of the data that is generated in the background. For example, as you travel from point a to point b in your car, your mobile knows where you’ve gone. It also knows where 100,000 others have and can create matrices from the data to see what areas are busy.

Skibiski explained that the system works in a similar way to Google’s PageRank. Using the most basic definition, PageRank works by ranking sites with more inbound links higher. SenseNetworks rates locations by how many people are there. The system also tracks where people come from and where they go from a location. It’s pretty freaking sweet and a data lover’s dream.

There are over 100,000 mobile devices sending data to SenseNetworks and the CitySense system then generates real-time maps (see example below) that show how “hot” a location is. The system becomes more intelligent over time as more data is fed into it. If your goal is to go to where the action is, CitySense will tell you that. The application works with Blackberry and iPhones currently. The application only monitors your data if you opt-in and all data that SenseNetworks receives is anonymous. For example, they can’t do a “ladies 28-35″ filter so I know where to go tonight. :)

The business plan is pretty interesting — SenseNetworks sends the aggregated data out to other companies who monetize the data and pay SenseNetworks for the data. For example, if there is an unusually large number of people visiting 14th and K, a cab company might want to know this so they can send cabs that way. If you were at the Diggnation event last week in Brooklyn, you know how great it would have been to have cabs lined up after the event was over.

NYC is coming soon and Skibiski explained that there are over 13,000 taxis in NYC all sending data back using GPS. Wouldn’t it be great if cabbies knew when the bridge was backed up and took the tunnel or vice-versa? There are many potential applications for the data and it will be exciting to watch the user adoption and service expansion for CitySense and the entire SenseNetworks product family.