Well, what a year it’s been – we started 2016 by telling you that this would be a tranformational year for personal data, and that prediction certainly came true. It was a big year for digi.me as well, and we thought it would be fun to round up our most viewed posts of the year. So…
- The most read post of the year, by some distance, was our announcement that we had raised £4.2m ($6.1m) in a Series A funding round led by Swiss Re. That was our biggest news of the year, and most important to us both as a business and as a key player in the personal data privacy world, so we’re delighted that so many of you shared our joy.
- In at number two was a significant update on the above news, when we were able to tell you that we had closed our Series A round at £5.3m ($7m), following additional investment, including $1m from the impact investment firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
- The third best read was a lighter post, featuring a truly terrible picture of me and musings on how photos can lie and deceive, and therefore why we should value one of the important benefits backing up our real life events and memories brings us – rounded memories to enjoy in future years.
- Why privacy is a right and not a luxury is one of what we call our vision blogs, discussing why privacy is a human right that all should have automatically regardless of income or location. That is obviously not the case at the moment, particularly in regards to control over our data, but digi.me continues to work hard to change this.
- The legislative game-changer for 2016 (and the coming years) was the formal agreement of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will come into force in 2018 and give users much greater protection and rights over how their personal data is used and stored. Read the key things you need to know here.
- This post was one of my personal favourites of the year simply because, as a journalist, I love a good story. And the tale from the first glimmer of digi.me in 2009 right up to our continuing evolution now is a cracking one – do read it!
- Back to the GDPR (told you it was important!), this time focusing on the four key things you need to know
- This was a big technological update from us – the chance to store your personal data securely in the cloud, as well as on your desktop – with an equal level of encryption and security, of course. In this, as in so much else, we continue to evolve, so look out for a VERY EXCITING product update early in 2017!
- As mentioned at the top of the post, we forecast that 2016 would be a transformative year for personal data, and so it proved!
- And, finally….there was a lot of interest from you in Facebook announcing plans to be at the forefront of data privacy innovation with a consultation report, which digi.me was part of. We’re very excited to see what 2017 brings for this.
So that was 2016 – thank you for being part of it! Our best wishes to all of you for a healthy and happy Christmas, and we hope you have a fabulous New Year. See you in 2017!