Hi Graham,
> I am always amazed at how you find the time to draft such long and closely argued posts.
As am I sometimes. However, when an assertion is made that anything pertaining to a business model is an essential truth the rebuttal is more constrained by time available than a consumer of it. It would take much more time and effort for example to rebut a claim that the Internet is powered by porn and lolcats as essential truth. In fact, I'd almost agree with that. But to propose that marketers should be free to use any means at their disposal as an essential truth is to poke holes in the dam.
Of much more interest to me though is my proposal that marketers are culpable for their role as the R&D arm of organized cybercrime. When consumers argued that Napster had legitimate non-infringing uses, industry argued that the costs of collateral damage outweighed the benefits of any non-infringing use. I am not aware of any case in which industry argued that anything other than economic harm was inflicted though. There exists a parallel trade-off between the benefit of adtech to marketing versus the cost borne by consumers. Marketers now argue that they should be free to circumvent consumer-side controls in order to deliver ads *despite* the fact that adtech is one of the primary vectors through which consumer devices are infected with malware. Except that when it was file sharing consumers paid with higher prices, less choice and less convenience. With regard to malware delivered via marketing infrastructure, consumers pay with higher overall prices in the aggregate, but also catastrophic financial losses to individuals, and the loss of human life.
Maybe we consumers have been going about this all wrong in arguing adtech on economic merits. Perhaps what we really need to be doing is forget about adtech altogether. Instead we should show our representatives how intrusive technology results in catastrophic financial losses and loss of lives and then demand laws that support our ability to effectively block or eliminate that technology. If it turns out that adtech remains indistinguishable from malware, well that's Marketing's problem then isn't it?
Kind regards,
-- T.Rob
(This email took about 20 minutes. It would have taken considerably less time except my Gin Gins arrived and apparently over here in the UK they are not a hard chew but more like molten ginger-flavored caramel. I think the email took 10 minutes net of Gin Gin keyboard contamination.)
T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner
IoPT Consulting, LLC
+1 704-443-TROB
From: Graham Reginald Hill [mailto:
]
Sent: Tuesday, September 09, 2014 9:08 AM
To: T.Rob
Cc: 'ProjectVRM list'
Subject: Aw: RE: Re: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014… Rights and Responsibilities
Hi T.Rob
Thanks for your response. I am always amazed at how you find the time to draft such long and closely argued posts. I hardöy have time to keep abreast of my reading!
Let ignore the broad areas where we agree and just look at those where we do not. In many experience, these are the ares where we are likely to find the most creative tension and thus, potentially the most innovative thinking.
1. Marketers have a legitimate interest in marketing their products to consumers. They should be free to use whatever means are at their disposal
Whilst I agree with the sentiment that consumers should be able to influence how they are communicated to, I do not agree with the proposal that consumers should be able to control how they are communicated to. Putting mandated exceptions to one side, I don't see any overriding moral, legal or practical reason why this power should be solely in the hands of consumers. I suggest this would in effect be the denial of the right to free speech of marketers. Furthermore, I would suggest that this right overrides the somewhat lesser moral value of fairness (itself the subject of fierce philosophical and political debate). Marketers should be free to communicate with consumers as they see fit, within the boundaries set out by the laws of the land. But they should also recognise that unsolicited, irrelevant and downright irritating communications are not only not going to lead to a sale, they may inadvertently lead to consumer irritation too. Giving customers control over communications is obviously not in marketers' best interests and ultimately, it may not be in the consumers' best interests either. As the late Steve Jobs wryly commented, 'A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them!.
2. Consumers have an interest in finding out about products. They should be free to use whatever means are at their disposal too
This was not aimed at liberal return policies, but at the information search that typically takes place before products are purchased. Consumers use a variety of means at their disposal to find out about products before they buy them: from their own experience with a company, through friends' recommendations and the opinions of independent experts, to company marketing. Plenty of research shows that marketing is a valuable part of the information search process. It is not in the consumer's interest to limit their sources of information, even though the prodiuct or the circumstances surrounding its purchase may mean that not all can effectively be used. Returns is a more complicated issue. It is up to the seller to decide what is economically viable when deciding on their returns policies. And customers shouldn't abuse the policies, particularly where they are particularly generous. Too much abuse by a minority frequently leads to a tightening of returns policies for the majority. What goes around comes around.
I look forward to your and others' views on how to create the right balance between the rights of marketers to free speech and the rights of consumers to limit it.
Best regards from Bishopsgate, London, Graham
--
Dr. Graham Hill
UK +44 7564 122 633
DE +49 170 487 6192
http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
Partner
Optima Partners
http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
Senior Associate
Nyras Capital
http://www.nyras.co.uk
Associate
Ctrl-Shift
https://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk
Gesendet: Freitag, 05. September 2014 um 18:37 Uhr
Von: "T.Rob" <
>
An: "'Graham Reginald Hill'" <
>, "'Doc Searls'" <
>
Cc: "'ProjectVRM list'" <
>
Betreff: RE: Re: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014… Strategy as Simple Rules
Wouldn't an essential truth be applicable in all cases? Like gravity, algebra or the speed of light? Those things to me seem to be essential truths. You cannot break those laws. You can only break yourself against those laws if you try.
> 1. Marketers have a legitimate interest in marketing their products to consumers. They should be free to use whatever means are at their disposal
Marketers should clearly NOT be free to use whatever means are at their disposal when doing so means subverting consumer-side controls to express preferences the marketer happens to disagree with. If I breach the NYT paywall to read content for free, I am subject to prosecution under the DMCA. But I have no such legal protection when the roles are reversed and marketers deliberately breach the defenses on my computer on behalf of the NYT. This fails the reciprocity test for fairness and is therefore coercive. At some point are marketers obliged to take the position that "just because we can doesn't mean we should" when crossing that line would be unethical, illegal or both. The delta between "can" versus "should" defines the degree to which the assertion above is not an essential truth and we crossed into that territory a long time ago.
> 2. Consumers have an interest in finding out about products. They should be free to use whatever means are at their disposal too
Clearly this is not the case. In the US where we enjoy rather liberal return policies I do not believe that consumers should be free to purchase items, try them out for a while for evaluation and then return them used and in unsaleable condition. Certainly I like the liberal return policies in the US (especially after spending time in the UK) but only as an exceptional case. Yeah, I could abuse the return policies of all my favorite vendors but the reason those policies work is because consumers actually do take the position that "just because I can doesn't mean I should" and we are all better for it.
3. Both parties are best served when the information provided by marketers closely matches the information required by consumers
Here I'm in complete agreement. Unfortunately, it seems to be the marketers who get to decide what information is required and zero is not an option as far as they are concerned. When consumers expressed their desire to not be tracked by turning off cookies, marketing invented Flash cookies, web beacons, persistent cookies and more. Every time consumer-side technology arose to block ads, marketing invented some newer technology to defeat it. When marketers recognize a preference for zero information as legitimate they will at long last be able to deliver on this essential truth.
4. However, the matching process is imprecise. The marketing-push model has built-in inefficiency and ineffectiveness. So does the information-pull model.
No argument.
5. Digital technology favours the marketer. It is more cost-effective to provide marketers with better matching tools than consumers
Only because of the heritage of digital technology which was necessarily scarce due the high cost involved. There is no reason that cannot change and in fact there is a movement called VRM that intends to do exactly that.
6. Marketing technology has greatly increased marketers' information about consumers and thus their ability to more closely match marketing to them
No argument there but note that we could, if we chose, make corresponding technology improvements on the consumer side. The fact that they exist mainly on the marketing side doesn't justify the business model but rather is a natural artifact of it.
7. But the consumer has the last word... they will ignore marketers if their marketing is too ineffective. They may even punish them if it is too intrusive
The consumer has the last word only as long as that word is not "no." When consumers say no by turning off cookies, enabling ad blockers and so forth, marketers invent new technology to subvert the consumer's preferences.
8. Smart marketers recognise these truths and try to create marketing that supports, serves and even sells to the right consumer at the right time.
Other than the characterization of these items as truths, no argument. The existence of technology designed specifically to ignore consumer preferences and circumvent their defenses suggests that not all marketers meet this definition of smart. By the same definition, the size of the population of smart marketers is directly proportional to the amount of marketing that honors consumer preferences, even when that preference is "no." It is, apparently, an exclusive club.
---=== ::: ===---
There are many reasons that a marketers should honor the consumer's preference even when that preference is to decline to receive marketing. We've had plenty of debate over the merit of arguments based on the underlying economic models, rights of both parties, reciprocity, etc. But there is one argument in particular that has never been adequately addressed by marketers in my opinion, and that is the use of invasive ad delivery technology as a delivery vehicle for malware. Marketers do the R&D to develop technology capable of bypassing consumer-side controls. Cybercriminals then use that technology to deliver malware.
Just last week it was discovered that the AppNexus ad network, who serve billions of ads daily, had been infiltrated and was delivering the Asprox weaponized exploit malware to visitors of reputable high-profile web sites like java.com, Photobucket, Deviant Art, TMZ and others. Asprox exploits Flash and Silverlight and requires only that the user visit the web site and render the ad. No other action on the user's part is required. Many web sites today are designed to not render content unless the ads have been rendered to the page. Marketers justify this practice with the argument that the content would not exist without the ads. But marketing disclaims any responsibility for their role in building the rails that deliver billions of malicious payloads daily. The AppNexus infiltration is not an isolated case and unless things change it won't be the last.
How might things change? For starters, marketing might voluntarily choose to draw a line beyond which they say "just because we can doesn't mean we should," drop out of the technology arms race, and honor consumer opt-out preferences, even when that preference is to decline ads. The impact to the consumer of a single malware compromise far outweighs the cumulative value of years and years of marketing. In that light marketing seems to be more an ally to cybercrime than to consumers, on net. In that triumvirate, the consumer stands alone and is attacked on all sides. Marketing needs to stand with the consumer as our ally against cybercriminals by politely declining to serve as cybercrime's Trojan horse any longer. Then it might be easier for us consumers to give some credence to claims that marketing is really on our side.
Or to put it in cluetrain terms… cybercriminals circumvent consumer security and preferences because they operate purely out of malicious intent. If you find that your business model relies on the same tactics as organized crime, should that not be a clue that perhaps you're doing it wrong?
Kind regards,
-- T.Rob
T.Robert Wyatt, Managing partner
IoPT Consulting, LLC
+1 704-443-TROB
From: Graham Reginald Hill [mailto:
]
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2014 3:57 AM
To: Doc Searls
Cc: ProjectVRM list
Subject: Aw: Re: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014… Strategy as Simple Rules
Hi Doc
Thanks for your long and somewhat ox-bowish response. I will try and keep mine as short and straight as possible in an Eisenhardtian way.
My argument comes down to a big handful of what I consider essential truths.
1. Marketers have a legitimate interest in marketing their products to consumers. They should be free to use whatever means are at their disposal
2. Consumers have an interest in finding out about products. They should be free to use whatever means are at their disposal too
3. Both parties are best served when the information provided by marketers closely matches the information required by consumers
4. However, the matching process is imprecise. The marketing-push model has buit-in inefficiency and ineffectiveness. So does the information-pull model.
5. Digital technology favours the marketer. It is more cost-effective to provide marketers with better matching tools than consumers
6. Marketing technology has greatly increased marketers' information about consumers and thus their ability to more closely match marketing to them
7. But the consumer has the last word... they will ignore marketers if their marketing is too ineffective. They may even punish them if it is too intrusive
8. Smart marketers recognise these truths and try to create marketing that supports, serves and even sells to the right consumer at the right time.
Your support for 1990s brand 'signalling theory' is quaint, if not a little Quixotian. As Akdeniz et al show in the recent paper on the 'Effectiveness of Marketing Cues' (http://paulcollege.unh.edu/sites/paulcollege.unh.edu/files/files/pm.pdf) consumers use a wide variety of signals - generated by marketers, third-parties, other consumers and particularly, through personal experience - to assess products. Marketers have a wide variety of tools at their disposal, from brand-level marketing, through direct marketing, to social marketing and digital marketing. No competent marketer would base their go to market strategy on any single one of them. They need and use all of them.
Although you attempted to answer my final question on digital technologies - by posing another - the question was really targeted at Anandan as a practicising marketer.
Best regards from Bishopsgate,, London, Graham
--
Dr. Graham Hill
UK +44 7564 122 633
DE +49 170 487 6192
http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
Partner
Optima Partners
http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
Senior Associate
Nyras Capital
http://www.nyras.co.uk
Associate
Ctrl-Shift
https://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 04. September 2014 um 20:47 Uhr
Von: "Doc Searls" <
>
An: "Graham Reginald Hill" <
>
Cc: "Anandan Jayaraman" <
>, "ProjectVRM list" <
>
Betreff: Re: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014… Implied vs Explicit Intentions
On Sep 4, 2014, at 4:44 AM, Graham Reginald Hill < > wrote:
Hi Anandan
Thanks for your comment. Apologies for my slow reply. Pressure of work.
I agree with you 100%. In principle. There is a real need to more closely align marketers' and customers' interests. Marketers have a legitimate interest in telling consumers about their products. And consumers have a legitimate interest in minimising the number of communications that are not relevant to them. Developments in technology have tended to favour the marketer;
Did the creation of email favor the marketer? Browsers? The Net and the Web? Did bikes or cars or mobile phones? Shoes? Hats?
All those things gave everybody who used them new ways to interact with the world — and opportunities for marketers to interact with people. (Right now I'm wearing a free t-shirt from Mozilla, effectively marketing them, I suppose.) But none of those things were invented by or for marketers — or by people who favored marketers in the process of inventing them. They were invented for individual people.
What I get from your thrust, Graham, is that all future invention serving individual needs for expressing intent in the marketplace has stopped (or is so barely called for that it might as well have stopped) — and that marketers are so much better at interacting with individuals that we should just give up and trust marketers to take over from here and do a great job. Do I have that wrong?
offering them ever more ingenious ways to target specific communications at particular customers. The current iteration of programmatic media provides marketers with the ability to target individual customers with particular content, during specific interactions, in real-time.
And lots of people hate that. Or barely tolerate it. Maybe not a majority in most places, but a lot of them. Demand for personalized message targeting — especially creepy surveillance-fed targeting — is either neutral or negative. Very few people, other than Robert Scoble and committed coupon-clippers, are out there saying "please bring on the personalized messages, everywhere I go."
These technology developments have not provided the same benefits to customers.
Right.
That is largely due to the fact that marketers are more concentrated buyers of technology than customers and thus, more profitable for technology vendors.
It's also huge fashion in the marketing world, which has become obsessed with data-gathering and crunching at all costs. (No, not all marketers, but enough.)
And that marketers have a bigger incentive to use them than the vast majority of passive customers.
What happens when customers have the means to be active, and not passive? In one small way — ad and tracking blocking — they already are. A couple days ago I heard from PageFair that numbers in their year-old ad-blocking report are now way low.
It's a matter of time before we have the means for individuals to say what their boundaries are, and how they won't be passive toward marketers who cross them. (Bonus link.)
The real challenge is in matching marketing communications as closely to consumers needs and wants as possible. This does not mean that marketers should limit their communications to just responding to consumers' stated intentions. Far from it. Consumer impulse buying behaviour shows very clearly that cognitive intentions are frequently overrruled by affective desires; research suggests that over 90% of consumers regularly buy products that are not on their shopping lists.
Two problems with that. One is that this is a fine excuse to drown people in messages that are annoying or off-base a percentage of time that rounds to 100%. The other is that people aren't always buying stuff, whether or not their affective circuits are active. In fact they are buying nothing most of the time. And, while they are buying nothing, the messages get pushed at them anyway.
Of course that's fine for brand advertising, which is highly underrated for the good that it does. (Such as sending strong economic signals of sufficiency and supporting stuff people want, such as journalism and entertainment.)
I agree with you that business, and the world, need advertising, and marketing. That's not what's at issue here. It's the scope of what marketers can do on one side, and what individuals can do on the other. VRM is about the latter.
In this case, VRM would neither serve marketers', nor customers' best interests.
And what do you say VRM is, here? I think we're at odds at the simple level of definition.
Current developments in contextual marketing and customer decision support systems (what I collectively think as marketing-as-a-service), and customer lifestyle management platforms will most likely provide simpler, better and cheaper solutions than the VRM more frequently discussed here. Pareto's principles suggest that knowing consumers' implied intentions, e.g. using behavioural analytics, will probably be more cost-effective for both marketers and customers alike than going the last mile to VRM's stated intentions. Of course, that doesn't prevent marketers from responding to consumers' stated intentions when they are received. Marketers can have their cake and eat it. And so can consumers.
Once again you seem to be suggesting that the absence (or paucity) of means is an argument against them. It's not.
I have a question for you as an experienced marjeter too. What is your view of how the emergence of digital technologies will accelerate these developments?
Which digital technologies? There are a zillion of them.
Best regards from Bishopsgate, London, Graham
PS. I find it somewhat misleading when people use startups such as Uber, Homejoy and AirBnB as examples of VRM. They are just examples of Cos providing on-demand services for customers over software platforms. Other than the multi-sided nature of many of the platforms, they are little different in principle to decidedly non-VRM business models such as calling the local taxi despatcher to get a taxi, arranging a cleaner though a cleaning company and using a GDS to book a hotel.
You may have something there. I've included Uber and Lyft because others have recommended it, and I've gone back and forth on it. I could take them off the list if you and others convince me that it's the right thing to do. I'm open.
Particulars... No doubt Uber and Lyft are improvements in dispatch. But they do something else that to me seems very VRooMy: they start with the customer, and what the customer wants — a better experience in getting from here to there, and a sense that the customer's actual intentions are being respected.
I've only experienced Uber so far (five times, four successful — with the fifth we were out of their service range), and I've been amazed at how well it answers my intentions, right now, right there in my phone. (With efficient phone/text integration, and even with a little image of the car approaching.) They also clearly learn by following the paths of intent on the pull side of the marketplace.
But does this make them anything more than a better form of something we already have? Not sure.
Doc
--
Dr. Graham Hill
UK +44 7564 122 633
DE +49 170 487 6192
http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
Partner
Optima Partners
http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
Senior Associate
Nyras Capital
http://www.nyras.co.uk
Associate
Ctrl-Shift
https://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk
Gesendet: Dienstag, 02. September 2014 um 17:51 Uhr
Von: "Anandan Jayaraman" <
>
An: "Graham Reginald Hill" <
>
Cc: "Doc Searls" <
>, "ProjectVRM list" <
>
Betreff: Re: Re: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014… Show me the VALUE!
Hello Doc,
I would like to say a big "thank you" for the inspiration and thought leadership, and in championing the cause for better relationships between suppliers and customers.
Over the course of 15+ yrs. working for CRM / Big Data companies, I was always struck by the fact that so little of what we did affected the end customer in a meaningful way. Notwithstanding the best of intentions, most of the value from CRM to date has been on sales force automation, agent productivity, call deflection to self service, smarter campaign management and other internal metrics. To me, Doc's book and VRM was a breath of fresh air.
We are in a new age where customers can actively state and get what they want using their smart phones. And, we are seeing the transformation of several markets and industries as supply and demand interact, co-create and engage in new and powerful ways that unlock tremendous value for both sides.
Graham,
I have really enjoyed your writing and perspectives. I do wonder though if the debate about VRM not having a business model and being theoretical focuses overly on the aspect of VRM as a privacy-protecting, free agent for the customer.
The larger opportunity here is about building smarter, more effective supplier-customer relationships where active customer participation (both to signal demand as well as engaging with suppliers) can achieve a win-win for both sides. Higher marketing ROI, lower cost per acquisition and higher CLTV for the supplier, and a more compelling customer experience, increased convenience and value for customers.
We are witnessing this transformation happen in transportation ( Uber, Lyft), home cleaning ( homejoy), home services (thumb tack), IT buying (spice works), lodging (AirBnB) and several other sectors. I would say that up to 20% of the latest YC batch are VRM type companies devising smarter ways to match customer needs with supply.
It is a very tough world out there where innovating is not the hardest part. Finding distribution, scale and liquidity is the real bitch, not to talk about regulation and fighting strong incumbents.
We will need to find ways to plant and nurture a thousand seeds, for a few will surely manage to break out and bloom as huge businesses.
Regards, AJ
On Tue, Sep 2, 2014 at 6:31 AM, Graham Reginald Hill < > wrote:
Hi Doc
As Kathryn wrote, a big thank you to you for your spiritual leadership of VRM over the past few years. I have not thanked you enough for the hard work you have put into developing it over the years. Even though I only agree with part of what you write, I am nevertheless very grateful for all of it.
I will leave the CRM > CExM >>> VRM for discussion over coffee and cakes on one of future your trips to London.
One of the bits I don't agree with is your suggestion that customers will implement VRM and organisations will, or will not, take note of it. This perspective is short-sighted. I would go as far as to say that it is foolhardy. It ignores the rather obvious fact that more value can be created for customers if they partner with organisations for mutual value co-creation than if they attempt to go it alone. As Grönroos & Voima in a paper on Ä'Critical Service Logic' Making Sense of Value Creation and Co-Creation' and Helfat in a paper on 'Product Sequencing: Co-Evolution of Knowledge, Capabiliies and Products' suggest, customer and company knowledge and capabiliies co-evolve together over time as they work more closely together. This co-evolution enables both customers and organisations to get more of what they want out of their interactions with each other.
I believe the heart of this and other structural problems with VRM lies in its focus on data, information and privacy, rather than on value, interactions and co-creation. By adopting a libertarian privacy perspective, VRM is forced to take sides with asymmetrically weaker customers, irrespective of whether doing so creates any value for them or not. The growing body of research in service-dominant logic, digital services innovation and customer engagement all suggest that focusing on value, interactions and co-creation will create better outcomes for customers than VRM's current obsession with data, information and privacy. Customers can have their cake and eat it. But not if they obsess about privacy. Perhaps it is time for VRM to enter the digital services age.
That customers and organisations should partner together for mutual value co-creation should not be up for serious debate. How they do that, is of course, a completely different kettle of fish.
Thanks once agaibn for your energy, support and encouragement over the years. Paradoxically, the less I agree with you the more I learn from you.
Best regards from Bishopsgate, London, Graham
--
Dr. Graham Hill
UK +44 7564 122 633
DE +49 170 487 6192
http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
Partner
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http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
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http://www.nyras.co.uk
Associate
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Gesendet: Dienstag, 02. September 2014 um 12:31 Uhr
Von: "Doc Searls" <
>
An: "Graham Reginald Hill" <
>
Cc: "ProjectVRM list" <
>
Betreff: Re: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014… Show me the MONEY!
On Sep 2, 2014, at 3:50 AM, Graham Reginald Hill < /" target="_blank"> > wrote:
Hi Doc
I skimmed through the 'document'. It is a very useful synopsis of the state of the VRooM. I will try and read it in its entirety on one of my many plane trips. I will also recommend that others read it, through social media channels. The only niggle I have with it, other than its obvious lack of detail, is its one-sidedness. It is very much your opinion rather than a synthesis of collected wisdom.
It is a synthesis. If I went to the trouble (and it would be a lot) of sourcing and footnoting every point or claim, the thing would never get done. But hey, if you want to help with that, please do.
I don't agree with some of it at all, e.g. your suggestion that CExM sits between CRM and VRM is somewhat dubious.
That came to me from CRM people. Tell me where to put it if it doesn't go there.
What I would really like to see is not so much a state of the VrooM, but the state of the market for different business models, of which VRM is but one. The challenge that organisations face today is not so much how to implement VRM, but whether to even bother with VRM at all.
They're not the ones that implement it. Obviously they need to welcome it, and connect to it, once the pieces are in place on the individual's side. And it is an open question whether they'll ever do that.
Despite being a keen follower of VRM on this list, the business case for VRM is still very much unproven. The recent Ctrl-Shift report on the economic case for PIMS helped, but it is incomplete and also highly speculative. It is this that lies at the heart of VRM's adoption.
To VRM, or not to VRM. The still missing economic case is the question.
Correct.
There is a section I left out, and it's basically the one you outline here. It is also the lower half of several graphics in the post.
I just added the section in. It's the last one, called "Questions": http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/vrm/2014/09/01/state-of-the-vroom-2014/#questions
See what you think.
Doc
Niggles aside. I look forward to reading the state of the VRooM.
Best regards from Bishopsgate, Graham
--
Dr. Graham Hill
/" target="_blank">
UK +44 7564 122 633
DE +49 170 487 6192
http://twitter.com/GrahamHill
http://www.linkedin.com/in/grahamhill
http://www.customerthink.com/graham_hill
Partner
Optima Partners
http://www.optimapartners.co.uk
Senior Associate
Nyras Capital
http://www.nyras.co.uk
Associate
Ctrl-Shift
https://www.ctrl-shift.co.uk
Gesendet: Dienstag, 02. September 2014 um 05:21 Uhr
Von: "Doc Searls" <
/" target="_blank">
>
An: "ProjectVRM list" <
/" target="_blank">
>
Betreff: [projectvrm] State of the VRooM 2014
Here it is, weighing in at close to seven thousand words, with lots of graphics explaining what we do, how we do it, and what I think we need to do next around research.
I promised Urs Gasser, Berkman's top guy, a report months ago. As it accumulated on my drive, it became clear to me that it really belonged out there in the world. So I hunkered down over the weekend and put it together.
It's incomplete, but "complete" would require writing another book, and I'm not up for that. But I do want ya'll to look it over and give me as many edits as you can.
I won't be able to do much with them tomorrow, since I'll be on the road to New Hampshire and Boston all day. But I'll get on it as fast as I can.
One of the most interesting sections of it, for me, is this one on community. The graphics there, and the papers from which they are drawn, do a nice job of explaining the heterarchical nature of ProjectVRM and many other efforts like it.
The research I recommend is toward coming up with some simple terms individuals can assert when dealing with sites on the Web. Efforts like Do Not Track are too coarse and site-hostile. Respect Network's Respect Connect button needs those terms, as I explained here. So does Mozilla's Persona, or whatever succeeds it. If all we come up with is a simple way to say "I'm cool with you tracking me on your site, but don't follow me when I leave" — while the site says "We'd like to be able to track you on our site, but won't follow you when you leave," we will have taken the first step toward many more respectful ones both sides can take. (And we'll have something that can be expressed in both code and plain language that both sides can use, and match up.)
I'm not closed to other recommendations. Bring 'em on. But I want to get going with something, because the academic year starts right now.
Thanks to everybody for such amazing help over all these years. Let's keep making it happen.
Doc
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