This week, we distill insights around Mint.com - a platform that uses gamification and data to help people manage their money. 100+ thinkers and planners within MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring projects on social data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and citizenship on the MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every week, we pick up one project and do a deep dive into conversations around it -- on the MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but also on the broader social web -- to distill insights and foresights. We share these insights with you on our People’s Insights blog and compile the best insights from the network and the blog in the People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine, as a showcase of our capabilities. We have further synthesized the insights to provide foresights for business leaders and changemakers — in the ten-part People’s Insights annual report titled Now & Next: Ten Frontiers for the Future of Engagement, now available as a Kindle eBook. For more, see: http://peopleslab.mslgroup.com/future-of-engagement

1. crowdsourcing | storytelling | citizenship | social data
Mint.com
People’s Insights Volume 2, Issue 16

2. Volume 2, Issue 16,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Mint.com
100+ thinkers and planners within
MSLGROUP share and discuss inspiring
projects on social data, crowdsourcing,
storytelling and citizenship on the
MSLGROUP Insights Network. Every
week, we pick up one project and curate
the conversations around it — on the
MSLGROUP Insights Network itself but
also on the broader social web — into
a weekly insights report. Every quarter,
we compile these insights, along with
original research and insights from the
MSLGROUP global network, into the
People’s Insights Quarterly Magazine.
We have synthesized the insights from
our year-long endeavor throughout 2012
to provide foresights for business leaders
and changemakers — in the ten-part
People’s Insights Annual Report titled
Now & Next: Ten Frontiers for the Future
of Engagement.
People’s Insights
In 2013, we continue to track inspiring
projects at the intersection of social
data, crowdsourcing, storytelling and
citizenship.
Do subscribe to receive our weekly
insights reports, quarterly magazines, and
annual reports, and do share your tips and
comments with us at @PeoplesLab on
Twitter.
People’s Insights
weekly report
People’s Insights
quarterly magazines
People’s Insights
Annual Report

3. 3
What is Mint.com?
Mint.com is a free platform that helps people manage their money. Founded in 2006, Mint currently
helps 10 million people manage 17 million financial accounts at 16,000 North American financial
institutions.
Source: Mint.com The Best Free Way to Manage Your Money
Blogger Ann Carns explains:
“Mint allows users to track multiple financial
accounts, including bank and credit card accounts,
in one place. To do so, users register at Mint and
enter account information and passwords, so the
program can obtain the information electronically
and aggregate it. (Mint.com was acquired by the
financial software company Intuit in 2009.)”
Source: mint.com
Caters to people who want
convenience, automation and a
helping hand
Mint aggregates data from multiple financial
accounts and presents it in one place. The
platform is accessible across devices including
web, mobile and tablets, and built its user base
around the promise of convenience.
As Mint user John Stevens commented at the
Google Play store:
“I have been using Mint on two devices and really
like having [access] to all my accts in one place,
especially when traveling.”
Mint also promises automation: after a one
time set up, the platform automatically pulls
transactional data from people’s bank accounts,
auto segregates it into different spending buckets
like auto and groceries, and reminds people to
pay bills on time.

4. Volume 2, Issue 16,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Mint.com
Blogger Tim Murphy said:
“No matter how responsible we try to be, everyone
forgets to pay bills from time to time. Rather than
hoping our memories get better with time (unlikely),
why not leverage technology when you can?”
As a result of the automation, Mint users share
Blogger Jill Tooley notes that Mint is always
looking out, “kind of like a parent who’s never fully
satisfied with accomplishments and always pushes
their kids toward excellence:”
“It’ll sometimes warn you that you spend too much
on X, Y, or Z. It’ll inform you if you fell short on your
budgeting goals. It’ll suggest ways you can cut
down on expenses whether you ask for that or not.
“And even if you’re doing great in every aspect, it’s
still involved in your business. A sparkling credit
score and zero credit card debt doesn’t necessarily
mean you’re on Easy Street, because there may be
something you could improve.”
Gamification helps people
improve their behavior
Mint uses gaming elements such as goals, points
and rewards to guide people’s actions and keep
them motivated. People can choose from a
preset list of financial goals, like “Buy a Home”
or “Trip to Hawaii,” or create their own goals.
Their progress is then monitored and presented
visually through bars.
The editorial team at LaptopMag notes:
“You get scores for how financially fit you are, a list
of tasks and specific points you need to consider in
order to achieve this fitness and bars showing how
far along you are in your budget for the month.”
Upon completing a goal, Mint encourages
people to share their achievement on their social
networks. Mark Henricks, a contributor to the Mint
blog, explains:
“In the final screen, Mint.com verbally slaps you
on the back with a congratulatory, “Boom!” Then
you get some good advice: make your commitment
more public by posting details via social media. It’s
been shown that people do better sticking to goals
when others get involved.”
In addition to the gaming elements woven into
the platform design, Mint also creates challenges
to engage people and encourage good behavior.
In his review of Mint’s “Financial Fitness” feature,
Techcrunch’s Jason Kincaid notes:
“Yes, it may sound like a bizarre combination at
first – personal finance and fun aren’t exactly
two things that go hand in hand. But it’s also a
smart move on Mint’s part, as it looks to turn the
mundane and often confusing activity of getting
your financial affairs in order into something a bit
more tolerable while increasing Mint’s engagement
in the process.”
Source: mint.com/how-it-works/goals
they feel secure about their transactions and
financial well being.
Mint user Charlene Hapeman commented:
“[Mint] connects to my account securely and
adds transactions so I don’t have to worry about
forgetting to write them down.”
Mint user Timothy Beldock commented:
“[Mint] provides a nice financial summary across multiple accounts. I don’t always use the advice, but it’s
nice to know that account activity is monitored.”

5. 5
Source: techcrunch.com
Source: mint.com
Beyond recognition, Mint also occasionally
hands out tangible rewards, like cash prizes.
Gamification.co’s Jeff Lopez shares:
“A great example was 2010’s “Drop Your Debt
Challenge” that rewarded players who had the
greatest declines in personal debt.”
Data and comparisons keep
people motivated
Mint uses data and comparisons to motivate
people in two ways.
First, Mint tracks people’s behavior and draws
comparisons to their own past behavior.
Source: mint.com/how-it-works/graphs
Second, Mint aggregates users’ data to draw comparisons, both between Mint users themselves, and
also between Mint users and non-Mint users. This helps people plan their expenses better and to see
their progress.

6. Volume 2, Issue 16,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Mint.com
Source: facebook.com/mint
Personal finance blogger Erik Folgate said:
“You can compare your own saving and spending
habits to trends that other Mint users are setting.
Using this data, you might realize that you’ve
set an unrealistically low food budget for your
neighborhood, or that you’re overspending on your
gym and fitness costs.”
Data and comparisons also encourage people
to evaluate and share their own experiences,
resulting in active discourse and sharing of tips
and financial strategies.
Even the ads help people save
more
Mint remains a free service by recommending
financial products to people, and earning a
percent of sales. The recommendations are
tailored to people’s spending behavior and
usually help people save even more money –
resulting in many favorable reviews.
Mashable’s Lauren Drell said:
“Mint makes money by helping you save money —
based on your spending and saving habits, Mint
can recommend thousands of products. If you
switch those products, Mint earns a kick-back, so
it’s a win-win for Mint and for the user.”
PCMag’s Jill Duffy said:
“It’s free and ad-supported, but even the ads add
value to a fantastic tool for managing your money.”
Source: mint.com/how-it-works/free
Source: pcmag.com
Source: stackexchange.com
Privacy and security issues deter
new users
Quite a few people have avoided using Mint
because they are not comfortable with sharing
their bank passwords and account details.
Response to the question “How much is in your emergency fund, Minters?”
on facebook.com/mint

7. 7
Source: consumerist.com
YouTube user augustuslxiii shared his skepticism
of third party web platforms:
“I’m a bit wary about giving away any passwords
to anyone else. I know Mint.com isn’t a scam, but
even so. It’s my bank password. I feel like I’d be
whispering my vault combination to someone I just
met.”
Another commenter highlighted the increase in
online security breaches:
“What with all the security breaches and leaks
these days, I’d never give out account information
to some third party, no matter how secure or not
it is. I’m not keeping my savings tucked under my
mattress, but there is a certain degree of distrust
with extremely sensitive information like that.”
Yet another commenter stressed that web
platforms must guarantee protection of data to
make new users feel secure:
“I [don’t] trust anyone’s cloud until they start
defining the damages they are willing to cover
for violated data privacy and provide a means to
validate the my data is secure online.”
Increasingly, people are also worried about
ownership and usage of their data.
NYTimes blogger Jennifer Saranow Schultz
wrote:
“Even if a site promises now not to sell aggregate
data about customers, it could change the
agreement at any time and go ahead and sell the
data. In addition, if such sites go bankrupt, even if
they currently don’t sell data, trustees may decide
to sell it to maximize the value of the assets.”
The recent global outrage over the US National
Security Agency’s collection of personal data will
further fuel privacy and security concerns in the
future.
As brands and organizations continue to collect
user behavior and transaction data with new
and existing digital properties, they will need to
become more effective and proactive in creating,
co-creating and communicating their policies.
Acquisitions challenge people’s
loyalty
People are also increasingly skeptical of
acquisitions of their favorite web platforms. For
many, acquisitions imply a change in operating
policies or mission, and –more seriously - the
eventual death of the platform.
Several Mint users have complained of usability
issues following Intuit’s acquisition of the
platform.
Xconomy’s Wade Roush commented:
“The trouble, for me, began about 18 months after
the Intuit acquisition, when the Mint.com team
decided to stop using Yodlee as their data provider
and switch to Intuit’s own back end. The reasoning
behind the change was understandable, but for
users, it was a huge pain.”
Others noted a drop in quality of customer
care and product upgrades. Mint user Acitrano
commented:
“The #1 biggest problem with Mint is that Intuit
seems like they’re trying to kill it by resource
starvation. The support is terrible and they seem
completely unwilling to improve the product.”
Acquisitions are now a red flag for savvy internet
users. We have seen this at scale with the recent
Yahoo acquisition of Tumblr: Yahoo CEO Marissa
Mayer announced the news with a promise not to
“screw up” Tumblr, and Techcrunch’s Matt Burns
noted that 72,000 blog posts were transferred
out of Tumblr within a single hour:
“Tumblr users are afraid Yahoo is going to ruin
it. After all, Yahoo has set that precedent after
scooping up sites like Geocities and del.icio.us only
to abandon development and let the sites rot in the
Internet sun.”

8. Volume 2, Issue 16,
April - June, 2013
Future of
Money
Mint.com
Money management tools and
apps
Several platforms like Payoff.com and Save
Up, integrate elements of data collection and
analysis, and gamification to help people manage
their money. We are also seeing niche money
management platforms, like Simplee which
helps people manage their medical expenses.
Source: payoff.com
Source: simplee.com

9. People’s Lab is MSLGROUP’s proprietary
crowdsourcing platform and approach that
helps organizations tap into people’s insights for
innovation, storytelling and change.
The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
helps organizations build and nurture public
or private, web or mobile, hosted or white
label communities around four pre-configured
application areas: Expertise Request Network,
Innovation Challenge Network, Research &
Insights Network and Contest & Activation
Network. Our community and gaming features
encourage people to share rich content, vote/
comment on other people’s content and
collaborate to find innovative solutions.
The People’s Lab crowdsourcing platform
and approach forms the core of our distinctive
insights and foresight approach, which consists
of four elements: organic conversation analysis,
MSLGROUP’s own insight communities, client-
specific insights communities, and ethnographic
deep dives into these communities. The People’s
Insights Quarterly Magazines showcase our
capability in crowdsourcing and analyzing
insights from conversations and communities.
People’s Lab:
Crowdsourcing Innovation & Insights
Learn more about us at:
peopleslab.mslgroup.com | twitter.com/peopleslab

10. For People’s Lab solutions, contact
pascal.beucler@mslgroup.com