| If I look at the cost model implicit in the diagram, it assumes a couple of things:
Low data storage costs Low data processing costs Low raw material (i.e. user data) costs
All of these costs are asymptotically approaching zero. It's not coincidental that "More Search/User Data" is at the centre of the diagram. What you are suggesting, it seems to me, is that the core change is not 'More', but instead 'Better'. I couldn't agree more (pun intended). I don't know, but I suspect, that search algorithms get more and more complex the more data is thrown at them because the signal to noise ratio keeps moving in the direction of more noise. VRM offers a way to turn up the gain on the signal side and reduce the noise, while enabling a better narrative to the user.
But trying to talk a data geek (be they marketer or medical researcher) into reducing their data set pre-emptively goes against the grain, even when you have data on your side. So, with respect to your Trusted Web Service Manager, it will be a good value proposition if it is integrated into the existing model and increases the relevance of results (the connection between a strong search product and increased users in the diagram) by REDUCING the search/user data set. And it will be Privacy by Design if it results in a more limited or consent driven data collection model. If the Trusted Web Service Manager is an 'externality' it becomes an added cost.
JW On 2013-07-07, at 1:11 PM, Peter Cranstone <
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> wrote:
RE: If VRM is to work then innovation (AKA profitability) needs to be disconnected from monetizing personal data as an object and connected instead to a process of transparently
monetizing expressed intent.
Agreed. But how do you put a value on 'intent' when people want everything to be free?
When the subject of money and profits rears it's ugly head we get to see who can create real value that a consumer/vendor is willing pay for. Right now the value of privacy is tied to free services. So the corollary to that would be, the value of my privacy
is now tied to a 'paid service' - simple yin and yang.
So that tells me that the notion of a 'Trusted Web Service Manager' which aligns the value of intent with vendors who wish to bid on it has serious merit. Because incumbent within that is the notion that both sides are paying for something.
Here's Google's 'Network Effect' and user metrics from 2010 – what someone needs to build is a realistic VRM Network Effect model – my bet is that it will all center around the Trusted Web Service Manager – something which will be just about impossible
for Google to compete with as it breaks their model below.
<8D23F09A-FE50-461B-960C-8BD4B21EAA79.png>
Here's Google's user metric from 2010
<6376C98F-C373-4146-A240-F3F721A4E629.png>
Peter
_________________________
Peter J. Cranstone
CEO. 3PMobile
Boulder,
CO USA
<0D794EC4-6F22-47F8-B3B5-24F9943D3965[3].png>
Improving the Mobile Web Experience
Cell:
720.663.1752
From: John Wunderlich <
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>
Date: Sunday, July 7, 2013 11:01 AM
To: Kevin Cox <
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>
Cc: Joyce Searls <
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>, Alan Mitchell <
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>, Matt Hogan <
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>,
Daniel Kaplan <
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>, ProjectVRM list <
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>
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] A VRM/PDS dream come true :-)
Kevin;
See my in-line responses below.
As a general comment I would argue that Internet commerce accelerates the tendency towards sectoral and industrial consolidation. This in turn leads to asymmetric power relations between the customers in their millions and the vendors in their dozens.
Thus the necessity for regulatory intervention to ensure that the rules of the game establish more equal power relationships between service users and service providers. This is how I see VRM, as a way of realizing a more equal power relationship.
{begin deliberately provocative suggestion}
The use of evolutionary comparisons suggests that there is competition between various commercial entities (presumably the ones that are 'evolving') to pass down their successful genes, which would be business process and/or business models that generate
competitive advantage.
If the above comparison of evolution (biological genes = commercial processes) is the the case, maybe what we need to look at it is the tax code. Nothing impacts business process profitability more than taxes. As a thought experiment imagine what the impact
on data collection would be if there were a tax on the amount of data collected from an individual regardless of consent. Not proposing, just saying' that such a revenue stream would a) give the state regulator both the income and the information it would
need to enforce data protection regulations and b) motivate enterprises to be frugal in the collection of personally identifiable information.
{end of deliberately provocative suggestion}
The systems under which organizations currently operate have 'evolved' to enable profit maximization and are focussed on delivering shareholder value on a quarter by quarter basis using back end payments for front end services. This means that attempts
to enable user control over their own data, or to put limits on the uses to which organizations put collected data, are castigated as inhibitions on innovation. If VRM is to work then innovation (AKA profitability) needs to be disconnected from monetizing
personal data as an object and connected instead to a process of transparently monetizing expressed intent.
JW
On 2013-07-05, at 12:53 PM, Kevin Cox <
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> wrote:
John,
Regulatory controls tell the players the rules of the game. However, we know that there is always profit to be made in breaking the rules and getting away with it.
Regulators generally recognize this, but also have to move forward on the presumption that people organizations will follow the rules of the game.
In designing social systems that are able to evolve we must build in social mechanisms that make it highly likely that breaking the rules will be discovered and punished by exclusion.
No sure that we can 'design' social systems, as the rule of unintended consequences too often creeps in.
Examples:
Working rules and social enforcement exist around spam. The rules are set in regulations around spam in many countries and the participants, including ISP's accept and enforce or support rules. In addition the vast majority of users work within the rules.
An example of nonworking rules would be anti-piracy rules. Breaking the rules is more the standard than the rules, and there is little effective punishment.
The difference between the two, or at least one difference, is in whose interests the rules were made. There is a common interest between the users and suppliers in the case of email (spammers are unwelcome interlopers, whereas there is a divergence of
interests between the content providers and content consumers in the case of privacy)
VRM works if the vendors can be confident in the identity of the customer, and if the customers can be assured of the identity of the vendors. Vendors can refuse to deal with people they cannot trust - while customers will refuse to deal with
vendors they cannot trust. Trust is broken when the rules of commerce are broken.
VRM works and trust can be built, I would argue, when the vendors and customers have a common interest. There is a common interest when there is a commercial relationship between the two where one wants to buy what the other has to sell. Your argument
about customers and vendors fails when it comes to 'free' services because customers are, in fact, the advertisers and data aggregators that pay for the services provided. The fact that there is a trusted relationship between service provider and advertiser
is the problem. So for these free services, your argument suggest to me that there needs to be a three way transitive trust relationship - Advertisor/Aggregator <-> Service Provider <-> Service Consumer.
If you look at successful living systems then this principle is everywhere. Darwin had it right when he talked about survival of the fittest. Those who interpreted him by thinking that the fittest were the fittest in a competitive sense were
wrong. The fittest are those who best fitted into the environment and cooperated with other entities in the environment so that they were able to survive and pass on their genes.
The best solution to passing on genes isn't always cooperation. Both symbiosis and parasitism work in evolutionary time. VRM is an argument for symbiosis (mutual benefit), but the current model is parasitic.
Humans have made the evolutionary step of being able to create environments in which to live and evolve. The environments we create that best survive are those where the forces of cooperation and the interests of the group outweigh the forces
of competition and self interest. To see how this works read "Super Cooperators - Altruism Evolution, and why we need each other to succeed" by Nowak and Highfield."
In the world of commerce knowing who the other party is so you can refuse to deal with them is the reason why VRM enables self regulation through exclusion. Stop cooperating and give individual entities the ability to stop dealing with the rule
breakers enforces compliance. Trying to enforce compliance of rules by force does not work in the interconnected world of commerce. Excluding rule breakers from a profitable participation does work.
Kevin
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