OpenUp Media and Politics Project

We produce millions of data points everyday about where we go, what we do and how we think and feel. And what we do online has a tremendous impact on our behavior, feelings and attitudes.  But until now, our data has mostly been used to sell us more stuff.   At OpenUp, we want to change this. We believe our data can be used to deeply understand ourselves and the world around us and change lives for the better.

OpenUp incentivizes groups of consumers to share their data with us to understand the impact of being online on what we buy, believe and do.  We look at Facebook filter bubbles and fake news. We link our exposure to what’s online with our actions and awareness offline. We mine millions of data points per day per user, and we use that data to publish research that can help us understand the intersection of our online and offline lives.
You can check out our research on our Medium Blog.

I’ve always been a writer first, writing stories when I was young to working for NBC in my 20s covering politics. In 2012, I went to work for BuzzFeed because they wanted to a writer who could use all the data they were gathering to tell stories.  I stumbled on the perfect role. Over the past five years first at BuzzFeed and now with OpenUp I’ve used mass amounts of information to tell stories about human behavior. Now we want to bring that to a bigger audience. The opportunity is vast, and I believe has the potential to change our own lives and our world for the better.

OpenUp is building a personalized algorithm that will allow users to download the OpenUp browser extension and get personalized, predictive analysis on their own behavior online. Some of the things you’ll be able to do with OpenUp:

• Understand what triggers you to shop or take other actions online
• How much Fake news are you exposed to
• How do you respond to advertising
• Link your mood to spending time on social media

By starting a crowdfunding campaign we are positioning ourselves to receive grants from organization like: The New York Media Lab, PEW Research, the Knight Foundation and National Science Foundation to continue our work. A successful crowdfunding campaign is critical first step to showing grant providers that there is public interest in our work.

Funding will go towards:

• Data storage and server costs
• Hiring a second part-time data scientist

Ashwini Anburajan (Founder, CEO) , and chief data explainer

Jiaqi Sun (Data Scientist) , with a background in aeronautical engineering

Ron Lee (Growth Hacking) ,with a background in marketing for startups