I can’t recall a time where I enjoyed watching the news less that I do today.  I had always really believed that as a society that we were slowly but surely making progress.  I felt like our country was getting better and better at accepting people of different race, religion, gender or sexuality. One generation building on the progress of the last.

Now I just don’t know.  The news flow that I see coming at me on a daily basis has me questioning whether that is true. 

One trend that I find particularly disturbing is the rise in the incidence of hate crimes.

Source: Quartz Media

Getting good data on hate crime trends isn’t easy. The New York Times had already reported that hate crimes surged in 2015 by a significant amount.  Since the Trump election there has been a general feeling that the hate crime trend has worsened even more. New York City confirmed this reporting a 31 percent rise in hate crimes in 2016.  On a national or state level that data isn’t available.

One thing is clear though and that is the trend has gotten worse.

There Are Apps For Everything – Even Steering Clear Of Crime

My search for hate crime data let me to Helios and Matheson Analytics Inc. (NASDAQ:HMNY) which is a big data company that late last year acquired an app called the RedZone Map. 

The RedZone app is able to provide a breakdown of hate crimes by type:

And also by location:

With the RedZone Map you can easily see through the data where disproportionately incidences of hate crimes are happening.  Sure enough, New York pops out and so does Illinois.

It is one piece of what the RedZone Map app can do.

The Redzone Map doesn’t just tell you where hate crimes (and all crimes) have happened, it can help you steer clear of the most dangerous areas.

Source: Helios and Matheson Analytics

The app gathers real time data on crime activity all across the world.  By plotting all of this data together the app can actually help you plot a travel route that keeps you away from high-crime areas.

The differentiating feature that the RedZone Map offers is that it is the first to include real crime data that is sourced directly from government agencies and supplemented with the first-hand accounts of users. The RedZone Map basically functions like Google’s (Nasdaq:GOOG) Waze navigation app with the added functionality of real time government crime data. The usefulness of the RedZone Map app is readily apparent for anyone who has ever found themselves in an area where they wish they had known not to go.

What We Know About Helios and Matheson

Helios and Matheson Analytics merged with the owner of the Redzone Map (Zone Technologies) in 2016.  The purpose of the merger seems to involve putting a promising product together with Helios and Matheson which has a history of serving Fortune 500 companies dating back to 1991.

Seems like a typical situation where a promising technology merges with a company that is better equipped to monetize it over time.

Since the merger, news flow has been slow.  The latest press release involved the announcement of former Major League Baseball player Daryl Strawberry as spokesman for the RedZone Map:

“Helios and Matheson and RedZone today announced a new partnership with Major League Baseball player Darryl Strawberry. Mr. Strawberry will serve as a spokesperson for the company, collaborating with RedZone on various marketing and public relations campaigns to promote safety and social empowerment, including personal appearances, video endorsements, media interviews and personal blog entries.”

The relationship with Strawberry would seem to relate to his community work which is focused on building community awareness of crime activity in an effort to make neighborhoods safer.

How much value he adds to the company isn’t clear to me.  I’ve never been able to get my head around how to quantify the value of marketing efforts.  I know that they work, I just don’t know how to assign specific values to marketing spending.

How valuable the RedZone Map is currently for Helios and Matheson also remains to be seen.  The merger with Zone Technologies was not complete until November 9, 2016 so no quarterly financials have been filed yet with the RedZone Map making an impact.

Given that the next quarterly filing is only going to include a month and a half of the RedZone Map I would expect that it won’t be until a few quarters of 2017 financials are filed that we will have some good trend data to sink our teeth into.

If the RedZone Map can attain a sufficient amount of scale it should be able to add some very high margin revenue to the Helios profit and loss statements.  I just saw a 25 year old billionaire television who created an app that my kids use to make funny faces (yes Snapchat)(SNAP), so I’ve learned to start paying attention to these kinds of businesses.