Re: [projectvrm] Foursquare as an intent engine. Are there others?

[Marc Lauritsen < >]

My long-simmering side venture, All About Choice (no public website yet), falls in the category of models that start with intent declarations.  In our case, choosers declare what they care about and how much in product/service selection efforts, and optionally cast their declarations to fellow choosers, helpers, and prospective 'choosees,' while contributing to a shared knowledge base that supports collaborative deliberation in a privacy-respecting and autonomy-enhancing way.

This piece in the inaugural issue of the new International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution, although focused on dispute resolution applications, has a decent overview of our concepts and aspirations.  Here's also a ten-minute intro to 'choiceboxing.'  I certainly hope AAC eventually joins the ranks of successful demand-driven ventures, and welcome suggestions on how best to move forward.

On 8/11/2014 1:53 PM, Nathan Schor wrote:

Doc and Lionel,

Foursquare approach to encouraging and satisfying intent via personalized recommendation is interesting in  that it expands what I’ve typically considered explicit intent _expression_.

Good examples of explicit intent powered business models are Uber and Task Rabbit. Take Uber for example. The vehicle owner is not broadcasting the expected message like ‘Use my cab. It’s clean and we’ll get you to your destination quickly and safely.’  Instead, with Uber it’s the customer announcing a straightforward intent: ‘I’m at location X and need to go to Y.’ Likewise for Task Rabbit.

In the Verge video, it’s appears that Foursquare is not acting solely as a 4^th party in the traditional sense, but also as a 3d party aggregator for vendors by broadcasting a message along the lines of ‘We’re nearby and your friends like us. So you will too.’. Cleverly combined with the customer’s previously entered preferences (and also those of their friends), this hybrid and indirect approach – a 3.5 party, if you will – may turn out to become an effective way to arouse and satisfy a dormant intent in a prospective customer.  If they facilitate the match, then a finder’s fee paid by vendor is a potential source of income.

Another reason that Uber and Task Rabbit deserve our attention is they are both clear examples of demand-driven ventures that are successful.

Does anyone know of others? Perhaps not as successful as those two, but firms whose business models start with an intent declaration from the customer, whether expressed explicitly like Uber/Task Rabbit or implicitly like Foursquare.

Nathan Schor 305.632.1368 ">

 

From: L. Wolberg [ ">mailto: ]
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 4:56 AM
To: Doc Searls
Cc: ProjectVRM list
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Foursquare as an intent engine

 

This does sound good. I like how they talk about "returning value" for the data mining. 

Of course, they have your location. Forever. Enabling backwards surveillance. I wish they would explain how they keep user data, what they encrypt...

 

WSJ: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/08/06/foursquare-now-tracks-users-even-when-the-app-is-closed/ 

 

On Sat, Aug 9, 2014 at 1:26 AM, Doc Searls < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Take a look at this Verge review of the new Foursquare:

<http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/6/5972737/foursquare-8-0-hands-on-the-ultimate-food-finding-app>

And note what it says about intent.

I've got it and I've tried it. Huge improvement over the old Foursquare, which I liked mostly because the tips were, on the whole, better than what I got on other services, such as Yelp.

This, however, is much more personalized. And it's clever about it in a way that isn't creepy. Not sure yet how it makes money because I haven't seen any ads yet, and I haven't paid anything for it. But so far it's a qualified ("wait and see") thumbs up.

doc