Sense Networks is a New York City based company with a focus on applications that analyze

big data Big data primarily refers to data sets that are too large or complex to be dealt with by traditional data processing, data-processing application software, software. Data with many entries (rows) offer greater statistical power, while data with ...

from

mobile phone A mobile phone or cell phone is a portable telephone that allows users to make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while moving within a designated telephone service area, unlike fixed-location phones ( landline phones). This rad ...

s, carrier networks, and

taxicabs A taxi, also known as a taxicab or simply a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice ...

, particularly by using

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

technology to make sense of large amounts of location (latitude/longitude) data. In 2009, Sense was named one of "The 25 Most Intriguing Startups in the World" by

Bloomberg Businessweek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'' (and before that ''Business Week'' and ''The Business Week''), is an American monthly business magazine published 12 times a year. The magazine debuted in New York City in Septembe ...

and was called "The Next Google" on the cover of

Newsweek ''Newsweek'' is an American weekly news magazine based in New York City. Founded as a weekly print magazine in 1933, it was widely distributed during the 20th century and has had many notable editors-in-chief. It is currently co-owned by Dev P ...

. In 2014, Sense Networks was acquired by YP, "the local search and advertising company owned by Cerberus Capital Management and AT&T." It was subsequently sold off to Verve in 2017

History

Sense Networks was founded by Greg Skibiski in February 2006 (2003?) near his home in

Northampton, Massachusetts The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of Northampton (including its outer villages, Florence, Massachusetts, Florence and ...

. After establishing an office in

NoHo NoHo, short for "North of Houston Street, Houston Street" (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded by Mercer Street (Manhattan), Mercer Street to the west, the Bowery ...

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

near

Silicon Alley Silicon Alley is an area of high tech companies centered around southern Manhattan's Flatiron district in New York City. The term was coined in the 1990s during the dot-com boom, alluding to California's Silicon Valley tech center. The term h ...

, Skibiski recruited Alex Pentland, Director of Human Dynamics Research and former Academic Head of the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

, Tony Jebara, Associate Professor and Head of the Machine Learning Laboratory at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

, and Christine Lemke, who would later become co-founders. Sense Networks investors include

Intel Capital Intel Capital Corporation started off as the investment arm of Intel Corporation in 1991 and in January 2025, it spun off as a standalone investment fund. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies off ...

Javelin Venture Partners
and Kenan Altunis. Founder Greg Skibiski was pushed out by lead investor

in November 2009 following the company's B round of financing. During the same week, the company won the Emerging Communications Conference "Company to Watch" Award. The company has three published

patent applications A patent application is a request pending at a patent office for the grant of a patent for an invention described in the patent specification and a set of one or more claims stated in a formal document, including necessary official forms and rel ...

for analyzing

sensor A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a devi ...

data streams: System and Method of Performing Location Analytics (US 20090307263), Comparing Spatial-Temporal Trails in Location Analytics (US 20100079336), and Anomaly Detection in Sensor Analytics (US 20100082301). The company was acquired by the

Yellow Pages The yellow pages are Telephone directory, telephone directories of business, businesses, organized by category rather than alphabetically by business name, in which advertising is sold. The directories were originally printed on yellow paper, ...

in 2014. This is a marketing conglomerate under AT&T and Cerberus Capital Management.

Products and services

The Citysense consumer application that shows hotspots of human activity in real-time from mobile phone location and taxicab GPS data was named by ReadWriteWeb (in The

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

) as "Top 10 Internet of Things Products of 2009". The Cabsense consumer application that shows the best place to catch a New York City taxicab based on GPS data from the vehicle was launched in March 2010.Grynbaum, Michael
"Need a Cab? New Analysis Shows Where to Find One"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'', New York, 2 April 2010. Retrieved on 2010-05-16. The Macrosense platform is for mobile application providers and mobile phone carriers to analyze billions of customer location data points for

predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of Statistics, statistical techniques from data mining, Predictive modelling, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or other ...

in advertising and churn management applications.

Privacy and data ownership

The company allows users to opt-out of their service through their website, and users may monitor their profile through their application. The company does not collect identifiable data (such as phone numbers or names); it collects data received from cellphone to construct anonymous profiles of consumers. This anonymous data/profiles may then be sold to third parties. The company's privacy and data ownership policies are based on The New Deal on Data, as advocated by Alex "Sandy" Pentland, head of the Human Dynamics group at MIT.

References

External links

Sense Networks website

CabSense website

CitySense website
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100820065030/http://www.citysense.com/ , date=2010-08-20 Android (operating system) software IOS software Mobile software Applied machine learning Big data companies

History

Products and services

Privacy and data ownership

See also

References

External links