Truth is, there are advertisers and marketers out there just slavering over our personal information on the Internet, trying to get their hands on as much as they can so they can better pitch their products to us. From our Facebook profiles to our Internet searches, that info is like gold. And now there’s a company attempting to give consumers some reward, instead of just advertisers.

Bynamite is a start-up based in San Francisco that is attempting to help consumers reap some of the benefits from all that info we put out into the Internet universe, in effect allowing us to get a handle on one of our biggest resources — ourselves!

“There should be an economic opportunity on the consumer side,” Ginsu Yoon, a co-founder of the company, tells the New York Times. “Nearly all the investment and technology is on the advertising side.”

While the idea is interesting — a beta program where users can basically see how the commercial Internet sees them in terms of advertising preferences — even the company’s owners aren’t sure it will be successful or work how they want it to.

“I may be wrong about the product and our company,” Yoon said. “But I’m absolutely convinced that the direction is right, giving people a way to identify and use this store of value that is their personal information.”

If it does end up enabling consumers to use their info to trade for things of value, this kind of program sounds like a sweet match for anyone freaked out over how their personal information is used, or at least they could make some money while they’re being used.

Unboxed – Rewarding Consumers for Providing Personal Data [New York Times]

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