|
Thursday, July 5, 2007
I was overheard to have said... 
| | About what hasn't changed (and needs to) — |
| | First, we have a long way to go in equipping the demand side to express two things: |
| | 1) its independence from supply-side customer entrapment schemes -- all that crap that's devoted to "owning" and "locking in" customers, which business (and even customers) still call "consumers"; and |
| | 2) new ways to engage with vendors ways that are useful and enriching for both customers and vendors, while respecting the privacy needs of both parties. This is what ProjectVRM is all about. VRM stands for Vendor Relationship Management. It's the reciprocal of Customer Relationship Management, which is the field that has been devoted to customer entrapment for far too long, and which has borne nearly the full weight of "relating" to customers -- and entirely on terms supplied by vendors. Customers need to be able to set terms as well, and to relate in ways that work for both sides.... |
| | Second, in the U.S. we have come to regard the Internet as a "service" that works as gravy on top of our telephone or cable TV connections. Billing from our local cable/telco duopoly supports that assumption, monthly. |
| | Meanwhile, the Net itself remains as it was designed to be in the first place: a simple set of ways to connect devices over any distance with as close to zero cost and hassle as possible, and with minimal interference from the companies that own the "pipes." |
| | If we were to write Cluetrain today I'm sure we would make a strong case for regarding the Internet as a public good with enormous "because effects." That is, far more money would be made because of it, rather than with it. |
| | This is, in fact, already the case, though it is barely recognized. The telcos and cablecos have Congress, state legislators and even citizens convinced that the Internet is something that belongs to them and that they can do with what they please. This is a Bad Thing. |
| | I'm not sure we require legislation to correct it (which puts me at odds with my friends in the Net Neutrality camp), but I am sure it needs correction. How is an open question. |
| | About "Web 2.0" and "social media" — |
| | I've said "Web 2.0 is what we'll call the next crash," as well as the current bubble. and I still believe that. Social Media as a "meme" may sink with the same boat. The more useful distinction is between the Live Web and the Static Web. The Live Web today is branching off of the Static Web. Much of what we call "social" happens there, though I dislike the "media" term because it's old and freighted with concepts inherited from TV, radio and all that. |
| | The Web was designed by Tim Berners-Lee in the first place as a way to share and edit documents that we write and publish. Later, we added syndication to that publishing-based vocabulary. Thanks to time-stamped RSS (really simple syndication --thanks, Dave Winer, for that one) feeds, everything in the syndicated section of the Live Web is chronologically based. There is an implicit date-ness to your basic blog URL:http://blogname.com/year/month/day/post. That post has a Permalink. Think about "perma" in a chronological sense. |
| | The whole blogosphere is chronological. What's latest is on top, but what's older does not merely scroll off the page into oblivion. It goes into a time-based archive. What's more, Technorati and Google Blogsearch both update their search engines within minutes or even seconds of when an RSS feed is posted. That's live. |
| | About the future of business: |
| | The walls of business will come down. That's the main effect of the Net itself. Companies are people and are learning to adapt to a world where everybody is connected, everybody contributes, and everybody is zero distance (or close enough) from everybody else. This is the "flat world" Tom Friedman wrote "The World is Flat" about, and he's right. Business on the whole has still not fully noticed this, however. |
| | The intention economy is one based on what customers actually want. It is one that removes the guesswork that requires advertising, PR, promotion and most of what we still call marketing. It is what happens when we equip customers with means to tell whole market categories exactly what they want, and have vendors compete to give it to them -- and not to have to enter a privately owned silo or a walled garden (e.g. eBay or Amazon or Orbitz) to get it. It's an open market ambition of mine. And it's part of what VRM is all about. |
| | The upside for customers is getting what they want,without having to fly like a bee from flower to flower, visiting a series of vendor silos that are all customer traps. The upside for vendors is getting rid of guesswork about what customers actually |
| | I think it will work because the Intention Economy is based on what people with money in hand actually want. Not some kluge based on creating demand" and "managing attention" and other marketing jive like that. |
| | And kudos to Shel for trying to make sense of the whole Social Thing. Even if it's not my cup of metier. He's doing a great job of that. |
Forth from the fourth
| |  Had a great time celebrating the 4th in Santa Barbara yesterday. The shot on the left was taken at the symphony performance (Sousa marches, Irving Berlin) in the Sunken Garden behind the amazing Santa Barbara County Courthouse. Tried to get some interesting shots of the "California National Flag" suggested by the combination of Stars & Stripes and palm trees. All the fireworks shots were compromised by vibrations under the camera somewhere. I used a tripod, but I guess the ground was shaky. |
There are responses to this message:Re: Thursday, July 5, 2007, skipstone, 7/16/07; 6:06:16 AM Re: Thursday, July 5, 2007, Jim Bursch, 7/6/07; 1:11:05 PM Re: Thursday, July 5, 2007, Damien Riley, 7/5/07; 2:33:16 PM
Copyright 2009 The Doc Searls Weblog
|
