I’m a fan of those in the UK, especially when it comes to social media….they are usually a step or two ahead of us here in the US. However, I came across a new start up that I believe will never get off the ground floor.

Tenant Assured is a UK startup that is yet to launch. While they start off on a good premise – using social media data for potential tenants of homes and other housing as a screening tool – they take it one step too far. Take a look at their promotional video:
 

 

The Washington Post recently discussed this new service and explained how it works. “After your would-be landlord sends you a request through the service, you’re required to grant it full access to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and/or Instagram profiles. From there, Tenant Assured scrapes your site activity, including entire conversation threads and private messages; runs it through natural language processing and other analytic software; and finally, spits out a report that catalogues everything from your personality to your “financial stress level.”

I just don’t see this happening or gaining traction. As a big fan of using social media data to learn more about people, whether it’s for employment purposes, insurance coverage, or even potential jurors for an upcoming trial, asking for full access, including private facing content, will not fly. Remember how employers in the US tried to request passwords for social sites on job applications a few years ago? I envision this new service to go much the same way – it ended as quickly as it started.

Privacy settings are created for a reason; some people want to keep all or part of their social interactions private. And that’s just fine. There is enough public facing social data out there to help companies who want to use that content for decision making on individuals, for whatever reason – a company dedicated to finding people who so badly want to live somewhere in particular that they will give up their social media privacy will be hard to come by.

According to the Washington Times article, this service became live last week; however, after visiting the company’s website, it looks like the launch may not have happened. It is still a fairly blank page that will display a “coming soon” message if you stick around long enough.

This will be one to watch; if it gains popularity among users, I’ll really be surprised. It’ll be interesting to monitor over the next few months to see if it picks up steam.