Here’s another example of innovation - brilliant. Want to know the contents of every US-arriving shipping container?
…The latest: importgenius.com, the brainchild of brothers Ryan and David Petersen, with Michael Kanko. They exploit customs reporting obligations and Freedom of Information requests to organize and publish — in real-time — the contents of every shipping container entering the United States.
There’s a neat ticker on the bottom of their page showing a trickle of these data. Watch it for a few minutes: it’s mesmerizing and provides a sometimes beautiful window into the wonders of international trade.
How might these data be useful to firms? Well here’s an example: On May 23, Ryan identified a spike in imports of a new type of device from Apple, leading him to (correctly) predict the arrival of the new iPhone. Apple’s secrecy throughout its supply chain is legendary, but not even Steve Jobs dares lie to U.S. customs.
More from the Freakonomics blog.
How is it that a company which has a CEO and a sister corporation based in China is selling customs data access to Americans while likely pirating the data from that foreign location?
@Mike - ImportGenius.com doesn’t have a CEO based in China. We are based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Our data is certainly not pirated from Chinese data sources, rather it comes directly from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The bill of lading for each shipment is a public record. We take these millions of documents and make them searchable so you can derive valuable business intelligence from the mess.
I assure you this guy Dan Keltman is no customer of ImportGenius.com and never has been. It’s funny the depths that some people will sink to in order to defame a company that is doing well.
Now why would I be censored from asking questions and Ryan Petersen able to get the floor? The questions I asked are legitimate. Is this set up to be a promo and advertisement for Import Genius? You have that right though- it is your space- it’s simply unfortunate. Just like a mainstream media.