Jigsaw calls itself an online directory of business contacts and company information. It’s more like data meets eBay. Jigsaw users buy, sell and (this is a big one) maintain contact information on millions of executives and purchasing folks throughout America. Sales people and recruiters swear by the service.
The service is a brilliant example of a user created tool that gets better them more it’s used. The data or list industry has been around for years and my experience tells me that Jigsaw may be a major wake-up for an industry perfectly happy with date error rates around 20%.Jigsaw motivates users to submit and clean the data on their system.
Users can simply pay for leads or buy them with points earned by submitting names and cleaning up names. Some users actually earn a little cash by submitting more contact data than they buy.
I interviewed Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler for my podcast site.
Detractors say that this type of service is an invasion of privacy. Jigsaw counters that no personal information, such as cell phones, is accepted and what they are doing has been done by the Dunn and Bradstreets and Hoovers of the world for years. They just do it better!
