27 Oct Who is Crystal, and how does she know you?
Have you met Crystal? No, you haven’t, but she knows a lot about you. In the age of Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, Snapchat, Instagram, Google searches and more, there’s a lot of information out there… But tech start-up Crystal is taking people-centric personal insights to a whole other level.
Founder Drew D’agostino told CNN Money he came up with the idea of Crystal in order to better understand his coworkers at a software company. Using available information online, Crystal assigns a person to one of 64 personality types. It then provides information about their supposed communication style and breaks down how to interact with them (e-mail and in person.) D’agostino said, “People are extremely intrigued and creeped out at the same time.”
People on Twitter and talking about how eerily correct Crystal is when describing their personalities. I looked myself up, and was surprised that it was VERY accurate. It reads: “Jenna has a dynamic, creative personality and trusts feelings and gut instinct more than rules or logic.” It also gives an “accuracy confidence” score, based on how much data is available. Since I have many social networking channels, it says Crystal found lots of online data for me, so they are “quite sure”- 85% in fact- that my profile is accurate.
Crystal goes on with tips on how to speak with me “tell a few jokes, switch up the subject to keep things interesting” (definitely true) and advice for working with me “recognize her achievements verbally, schedule meetings casually (i.e. tomorrow afternoon)”- also spot-on.
But the value behind this aggregated personality snapshot? Founder D’agostino says it’s all about helping people interact more effectively with one another- Crystal can even auto-correct correct your e-mails using a Gmail plug-in as you type, tailoring them to the recipient’s communication style. Pretty neat. But will people pay for this service when they could also do some basic Google searching? Crystal’s personality search is free, but premium features for a monthly subscription range from $19-$49. Another add-on is a “relationship prediction tool” that shows how a person might fit in with an existing team.
D’agostino says about 1,000 new users sign up every day, many from progressive companies like Google, Thompson Reuters, and Accenture. Crystal is still in its infancy- it’s only six months old and currently run by a 5-person team out of Nashville- so it will be interesting to see if it becomes a mainstay in predicative communication or just the newest trend people are talking about on Twitter.
As always, if you’re interested in learning more about social media trends, contact Jenna at jbennett@axiomcom.com.
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