New mobile business app, Owler, provides up-to-the-minute news and information about companies

Serial entrepreneur and crowdsourcing pioneer Jim Fowler launched Owler.com and the Owler mobile business app (iOS) on June 25 to provide a single source for business news and information to help people keep up with the fast pace of business.

Owler is the only mobile and online source for business information that provides noise-free news alerts, crowdsourced company profiles and community polls, says the company. The Owler app, which is the first mobile app to offer targeted business news and company profiles in one place, and Owler.com business-information services are available for free.

Fowler opened the door for crowdsourcing as a valuable resource for collecting business data when he founded Jigsaw Data Corporation in 2004 and built an enormous database of business-contact information contributed by the Jigsaw community. He sold the company to Salesforce in 2010 for $175 million in one of the most successful tech exits that year.

Owler uses the strength and knowledge of its community to create company profiles, which serve as living snapshots of more than 900,000 public and private companies from across all industries. The Owler community is also instrumental in providing insight on business trends and company moves through its participation in quick, fun polls. Owler’s “Poll Builder” platform gives members the opportunity to measure market sentiment by creating polls of their own that draw responses from Owler’s community of business professionals.

In addition to crowdsourced company profiles and community polls, another of Owler’s key offerings is its sophisticated alert system for business news. After members select which specific companies they need and want to follow, Owler curates and consolidates on-target business news for the selected companies into one convenient format that is available to members in three forms: 1) online in their Owler news feed; 2) delivered to their inbox; and 3) in the Owler mobile app, accompanied by real-time breaking-news alerts sent to their phone. Robust filters ensure the delivery of customized and up-to-the-minute news. Owler also includes a “Discover” section to help members find interesting business news outside of the companies they follow.