A Facebook for (the internet of) Things

When it comes to the internet of things we talk a lot about infrastructure. Consider this the sensors and the connectivity part of the puzzle with topics such as the IP addresses that everyday objects will need to have and the need for machine-to-machine (M2M) networks that connect all those sensors. However, here’s another part of the story. I am talking about  the software ecosystem that will live on top of that infrastructure. And one of the most important parts of this ecosystem is identity management. Not for the users’ identities, but for the things themselves. A Facebook for things if you will. This is where Evrythng joins the the party. A startup that wants to provide the identity management to enable smart new applications to live on the infrastructure we call the internet/web of things/objects/everything. The central piece of technology to the Evrythng approach is the smartphone. End users will use their device to interact with a object using NFC for example. This allows for interaction with things that aren’t necessarily always connected to the internet. Evrything also supplies analytics and APIs for businesses that want to track individual items and add data to them as they pass through the distribution chain. Check out this case study with beverages giant Diageo, where people buying their dad a bottle of whisky for his birthday could add a “personalized film tribute”. From the study:

EVRYTHNG helped Diageo build a strategic technology platform running on the EVRYTHNG Engine called +More, which makes all Diageo’s products smart by connecting them to the Web. This allows the company to use digital interaction with physical products to deliver the information and experiences consumers want, in the time and place of their choosing. +More allows digital interaction with retailers and other supply partners, based on how products are made, sold and used. Diageo are deploying a range of applications which let them track products in the supply chain and deliver invaluable interaction analytics. Plus create consumer marketing experiences to personalize products as gifts, share products in social networking streams, and ‘check-in’ to products for frictionless loyalty rewards.

I think the idea of a things identity isn’t as weird as it might sound, I can imagine a Facebook like newsfeed where all of my connected devices provide me with their status updates. It’s seems like a natural way of interacting with these objects in a familiar fashion to most end-users.