Startup business studies workers online

Long Island venture capitalist Mark Fasciano's latest start-up idea has just received approval from the board of his Jericho-based Canrock Ventures, and this one promises to raise some questions among privacy advocates who worry about corporate encroachment of employees' rights.

The start-up Canrock has OK'd funding for is called Inbox Analytics, which is based on a premise similar to that of General Sentiment, a company Fasciano developed in 2009 whose software tells companies what customers are saying, both positive and negative, about them.

Inbox Analytics will look, in the aggregate, at emails, blogs and social media sites used by employees at work and tell managers what workers think is important, how they are collaborating, and the amount of time they may be spending, or not, on projects.

"It's not spyware," said Natasha Srulowitz, whose career has focused on helping companies get started, and who will be Inbox's president. "The goal is not to capture peoples' sensitive information. The goal is to look at trends. This is a constrained technology that looks at broad sentiments."

Employees can benefit as well, Srulowitz said. They would be able to determine how much of their workday they are devoting to tasks, and can decide if they want to do more or less.

"We're really excited about this," said Fasciano. He predicted it would be months before the program is ready for the marketplace.

Srulowitz acknowledged Inbox, based in Jericho, will have to convince people it is not Big Brother in waiting.

"But first you have the question of whether it is legal," she said. "We're getting a sense that it is legal."

But John Verdi, senior counsel for the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, expressed concerns.

"I would say it raises a host of privacy risks," Verdi said. And he added, "It's not at all clear there is the right to do this without employees' consent."

Srulowitz said she will be addressing those concerns. "We're very well aware" of the perception, she said. "We're not immune to it or ignorant of it."