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RE: Geospatial Big Data: The Magic of Maps and Money
Orbital Insight has a cool tagline and a terrifying'y Big-Brother-esque product, but let's take a candid look at their performance. They've been around for 5 years, raised ~80 Million in seed funding, going back for another round according to Crunchbase. To put that in context, that's less than 2% of what Snapchat raised. Not a lot of money when your business model requires regular ultra-hi-res photos taken from satellites. They've received next to no attention outside of futurist articles and fanboying. The idea is cool, like really f*cking cool, but their personal brand of satellite imagery + ML has a long way to go before becoming a major market player.
Valid point. I was keeping the article short and focused -- otherwise I'd never have finished -- so I didn't go into just how many companies and startups do pretty much the same thing Orbital Insight does. It's not one company, it's an entire surveillance economy ecosystem providing this connective tissue to the highest bidder(s)
Heck, there's even this which is available to you and I freely (and isn't that pretty crazy in and of itself?) They, in turn, get their data from Planet who appear to do ... pretty much what Orbital Insight does lol
Also, Snapchat is a messaging program and hilariously overvalued, especially compared to a much cooler and more potent service like geospatial big data. A great many of the best minds in the world are building apps when they could be building the real future.