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now with ads targetted right at us we areseeing an evolution that pushes the edge of ecommerce society.
you think about this scoble: google base, now google knows what you buy! what items you look at, even the houses you like.
these are exciting times that in my mind will usher in extreme rebels. people who care about their privacy so much that they will firebomb the google offices.
i for one welcome the evolution of commerce, even if it means that skynet is becoming aware.
adam
1) The monetization side- which is self-evident
2) The correlation side- which is a much harder problem.
The correlation system is something that many ecommerce sites have tried to develop - and failed at. Amazon and Google are the only two that leap to mind as having correlation systems that actually work. My point here is that unless Amazon puts an API on their correlation system, it's unlikely that any minor-league service will be able to get their hands on a wide-enough dataset to be useful.
So I wonder if that's what Google Base is actually about?
Certainly privacy soup.
(1) Who owns the information about what you're paying attention to?
(2) Where is this information stored?
(3) How do you control how this information is shared between services ("gadgets")?
Today we have advertising components that gather some of this data. The search engine gathers some too. Then Maps gather data too. All of these are siloed.
How do you control how this information is shared? That's up to the developers to design a common API that we all can share data through. It'll be federated between the various services. Amazon, I'm sure, could make a system that shares data with Google and vice versa.
Don't get me wrong I would love to see it happen, but you are being a bit too optimistic.
Having this information stored at the OS level, though, does provide opportunties for deciding how it may be shared. IE7, for example, could alert the user to the fact that an outside service wishes access to their attention store, and enable the user to grant or deny that access.
Doing this in a way that makes sense to non-techies is tricky, but IMO, MS has done a decent job in the past simplifying highly technical decisions for end users.
I'm starting to seem like a stalker, but it's only because I want to see a solid product turn into something more concrete!
Just email me, DevilsRejection at gmail.com
Take this example: I go to school and find a girl, we go out for 3 months, then I cheat on her for some strange reason. She then spreads rumors about me saying I beat her. Now no girl in that particular school will go out with me.
Now I can go to a new school, no one knows me, and start over fresh.
How does that relate to attention data? Well let's say that the school where all this happened was Google. The moment I go to a service/site that uses MSN I now have to start over. MSN doesn't know anything about me, the advertising is very general, unlike the years worth of content collected with Google, it just turns me off from wanting to use MSN.
Now if this data was shared then I can have the same experience no matter where I am! In the end it's all about profit and it's the advertisers who get the money. Google, MSN, Amazon, they're just the middle men between us the consumer and the advertising companies.
All of them should work together to benefit both us the consumer, and the advertisers.
Hate to burst your bubble, but telling a company like MSFT to "work together with others to benefit the consumer" is like telling a termite to take up ballet. MSFT's entire ETHOS is to get people to STOP working with others and ONLY work with them. That's the culture they've built.
But now the game has changed and all the hard charging type A brains at MSFT have to suddenly retool their minds and their attitudes to "share" better. But that is very very hard. Imagine someone like Ballmer "sharing"? He of the throwing of chairs?
Not likely.
I hope that Steve Ballmer is atleast reading this blog, everyday, to see what an employer passionate about the future, who mingles with the competitors, and the latest start-ups, has to say.
The net used to be boring, now it looks like the next few years will yeild expotential growth in more service oriented content. Interesting times lie ahead indeed.
With the hubbub that Google about privacy over Gmail a third party gathering information from their own customers is one thing, connecting the dots and sharing that information with a another party... I think that would cross the line and be a violation of one's privacy... unless one were to 'opt in'.
I have no problem with Airmiles tracking my purchases and then sending me a printed flyer with offers from other Airmiles merchants with my Airmiles statement. If they were to target me based off past purchasing patterns that is where I would draw the line.
Scobel: the light bulb went on for you and you chose to look at the commerce application and sharing of information between companies. I do not care whether it is tracked by Google or Airmiles, it makes no difference sharing my personal information and purchasing trends or patterns is nobodies damn business. Just because something is possible does not mean it should be done or is a good business practice.
If "attention" in the way that you're using it is to ever succeed, the most important thing that will have to happen is that we get past advertising, period. Laugh if you want to, but a post-advertising world would be one where service replaces advertising. Don't tell me you want to do something for me... do something for me that's so great I'm going to communicate and spread it throughout my social network. Trust and reputation are everything.
A quick question - What is the emotion felt by you people when someone unknown to you greets you by your name? I'm thinking of when you are paying by VISA etc and they read the card and say thank you Mr X, personally I hate it!
I'm sure there are a number of companies drooling over the idea that they can find out so much about you, but how many of us would really give them the opportunity to do that? It's unrealistic to believe that people would willingly permit services to know so much about them just to get better advertisements (and if they did so *un*willingly, the service would be facing some expensive lawsuits).
You might, however, want a specific service to track your attention so that it can make better recommendations to you (well-known examples of this are Amazon.com and Netflix). Or you might want a search engine to track your attention to provide personalized search. And you might want access to this attention data so that you can share it with other services.
And of course, RSS aggregators can use your attention data to help you to deal with information overload. If an aggregator knows which feeds you pay the most attention to, it can recommend other feeds to you. And if an aggregator knows which topics you pay the most attention to, it can locate related posts outside of your subscriptions which deal with the same topic.
Just to provide a concrete example of a simple use of attention, very soon FeedDemon will enable you to generate an OPML export of the feeds you pay the most attention to. You can then share this OPML with another service, or even expose it on your web site so others can subscribe to the feeds you read the most.
http://mashable.com/2005/10/28/wisdom-of-crowds...
There are much better models to gain the attention of people like me, that is, to not show any ads at all, but to use the information to prioritize the information in queries I do such that it most likely brings what I am looking for, reducing the time wasted searching for a product and displaying related items Amazon style.
When I am in shopping mood I actually go to one of two places, a shop I know with huge catalogue or a price comparison site. There were recently some study showing people increasingly become more "immune" to ads. My self study shows I am totally immune to web/tv/radio ads, but very (a surprise to me even!) receiving of personally conveyed ads. Before studying this I thought that I weren't making purchase decisions based on mouth to mouth recommendations, since those over half of the time aren't based on proper research and facts. I am now trying to be more careful about listening to direct recommendations now that I know that I tend to purchase very expensive stuff just based on that without further research.
In web the best model is to differentiate query contexts. Make people know and go a shopping search engine that truly gives what people want, not what companies pay the search company push. Example: Imagine if Google was split to Shoople, Serple (services) and so on, such that they were exclusive of each other - OR that Google could know what you really want. That would be so awesome. Googling would bring anything BUT shops and services, since those have dedicated search contexts. Less time spent on pages trying to game Google and more time spent on reading blog recommendations for example and then using dedicated service/product searches to actually find things.
The current model is that went I have shopping mood I go to just few places which really know what I want and not try to push everything from everyone (Google search). This results my money going to just couple places instead of the one which might be providing either better service or value. Ad model thus doesn't work.
At what point does the commodization of attention become not a convenience but a box that defines who you are?
I hope Scoble and others enamored with this brave new technology rent Jurassic Park next weekend: not everything goes the way you expect when it comes to technology.
- As a publisher, more control over what ads appear on my site. Perhaps a pair of love, ban buttons on ads.
- As a customer, an RSS feed of Ads directly targeted at me or my business sector. Let me read stuff in my own time that I might actually be interested in. And you can work out what I'm interested in by what I click through. As a business, think of it as another form of clipping service. "Who's advertising in my market niche?"
And a note. In order to make attention work and aggregate attention across multiple sites, we're going to need much better identity services and much more personal control of our own privacy. Time to talk to Kim Cameron.
There are inumerable complexities involved that require huge amounts of engineering and integration. Just how does MSFT propose to handle that? Oh yes, I just seen they plan to make integration their next big play. With what and to what I ask?
There are two parts to the privacy of attention that come into play.
One (Nick in comment 10 hit it on the head) - Who owns an manages the information. Many people believe they should own their Amazon records and so to be able to shop that information around to others. Similar to airline reward programs (you build up *status* with one airline but their service turns horrible, you want to sample other airline offerings, you want to take your flight history with you and get similar service so you can truly compare and be a well informed consumer - it is in the company's interest to do this also as it will lead to a happy customer). In the business world this is called CMI (Consumer Managed Information).
Two - Privacy of the information. Who do we trust with access to the information. Some people trust Google (Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, etc.) with all their information, while others want to parse out who has access to what and how much information. You may not want everybody in your "trusted" network to know where you are (buying holiday presents, lets say).
The information has value, great value, but privacy and ownership have to be addressed or any attempt by corporations to gather and profit without the consumer is doomed...DOOMED!
I can see a world where consumers have the leverage to say to marketers, if you want to do business with ME the requirement is to USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTION DATA. My attention is scarce I don't time to work with marketers who don't respect my wishes.
You want to serve me ads? Fine, but stop using your inaccuate targeting systems that don't work - USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTIONS. (No more GoDaddy and Earthlink ads please. I have heard them each over 200 times. I have no use for Earthlink and I'm already a GoDaddy customer. PLEASE STOP!!!!)
You want to personalize your service to me? Fine, but stop using your inaccurate personalization systems based on your inaccurate siloed view of my data they don't work - USE MY ATTENTION/ INTENTIONS.
Otherwise I refuse to view your ads and/or do business with you.
Privacy is a 1.0 problem...;-)
Did this captured your attention? Good!! =)
My question is:
WHAT DO WE WANT FOR THE FUTURE?
The desapearing of conventional advertising and a system that control all of our consuming moves = (END OF PRIVACY)
OR
Guerrila Marketing (creative Marketing that capture EVERYONE'S attention that creates experiences and a true proximity relation between brands and the final consumer), altough we will constantly watch and see brands in every corner.
PERHAPS SOME OF YOU GUYS HAVE A DIFFERENT AND ANOTHER VISION ABOUT IT
My best regards,
João Dias 24 years old