Who is Jerry ?

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Auki asks Who is Jerry ?

These are all keyword searches we have uncovered this month from people panicked about 'somone' called Jerry who knows too much apparently. But the reality is somewhat more of a giggle.

Founded by Victorian Simon J Hill circa 2010 199-Jerry ( http://www.199jerry.com.au ) is an SMS service - currently with in-excess of 70 employed people who utilise social networking sites and other miscellaneous data to answer questions about your friends that make it seem like the fictitious construct called "Jerry" really knows something about you. With the ever expanding use of social media services and shared personal information publicly available nowadays, society tends to forget that personal information is; in fact, not personal anymore once you have entered it in somewhere.  It lives electronically potentially into perpetuity.

Whilst some of us are able to have a laugh and know that it is in fact just intended as a bit of fun, I can't help but noticed cases where people are dismayed or frightened by some of the information they receive from the 199Jerry "Trivia Service". However, before anyone gets indignant about the answers "Jerry" gives them and feels the need to take action, the terms and conditions for using this service are laid out in their privacy policy and their terms documentation. Here's a nice writeup from Australian Anthill that gives a good background to how it all came about!

" ... Twenty-four year-old Simon J Hill quit a job as a physiotherapist to start 199-JERRY earlier this year, also known as SIMISH Pty Ltd. Using word of mouth and social media, he built some buzz around the question “Who is Jerry?” (visitors to his site can read a saucy profile of the mysterious, made-up genius. A snippet: “Adopted and hand-reared by Nepalese monks, Jerry was raised on a rocky outcrop in the mountains of Tibet. By age 2 Jerry was wrestling and taming wild yak.”) He began hiring people to staff a 24-7 service that could answer questions like “Who won the 2006 AFL Norm Smith Medal?” and “Where is the nearest Fitness First to Flinders Street station?” Initially, the pressure was on: Hill was receiving far more questions than he could handle. “When people were waiting one hour-plus for an answer, I knew I had to pull back promotions and start from the ground again,” he says. “I then hired 50 people within 16 weeks of starting the business.” 199-JERRY now employs about 70 people, including three managers who run the day-to-day and free up Hill to grow the company. The service gets more than 50,000 messages a month. Each question costs $4 to send. He plans to take 199-JERRY to the UK in February 2011, and is now working on a fashion site with a mentor who was attracted by the success of the SMS service. ... Read more at anthillonline.com "