The WELL: inkwell.vue.451: Doc Searls - The Intention Economy

#53: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Mon 3 Sep 12 13:34

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:34:00 PDT

Thanks Doc, this has been enlightening. Kudos for all the various groups and sites you've put together. All the best with the coming book as well. [Read entire topic]

#52: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Mon 3 Sep 12 12:17

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:17:00 PDT

Big thanks to Doc for this enlightening discussion about vendor relationship management and _The Intention Economy_. Also thanks to everyone else who contributed. Reminder that you can find more information here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page - also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_economy. [Read entire topic]

#51: Doc Searls (doc-searls) Mon 3 Sep 12 09:29

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 09:29:00 PDT

Even with the big retailer conveniences of aggregation and intermediation, each is itself still a silo. And that remains a problem, because there are limits to what can be done by, and for, customers within a silo.

We are now at a point, in the history of retailing, when the limits of vendor-side aggregation and intermediation have been reached, and when in fact they have been over-reached by some of those same companies, especially through the use of entrapping inconveniences such as loyalty cards, coupons, rewards and discounting. The frictions involved with those are gigantic. If you shop at Trader Joe's, you can witness the benefits to both a seller and a buyer of no entrapping gimmicks at all: good products, low prices, and absent marketing frictions. And customers love them for it.

It's time to build out ways for each of us as individuals to have our own forms of aggregation and reach * in standard, common ways * across multiple retailers and services. That's the main thing VRM is for. (And it goes beyond UI.)

To some degree we already have this with cash and credit. Cash is ours, when we have it, and it works with all vendors. A bank is essentially a fourth party * one working for us rather than for the seller. (Ignoring for now all the ways banks have misbehaved since radical deregulation of securities manipulation by them.) To some degree so are Visa, Amex and MasterCard, even though they make more money on the sell side than the buy side (slicing off a small chunk of every transaction). But we could use more, and better, means.

By definition VRM is something the individual has and does. It's not something "provided" to them by a seller. Obviously there are many good things sellers can do. But they can't do it all. And, now that we're reaching the limits of vendor-side build-out of buyer conveniences, VRM can more clearly be seen as a greenfield. [Read entire topic]

#50: Brian Slesinsky (bslesins) Sun 2 Sep 12 22:51

Sun, 02 Sep 2012 22:51:00 PDT

Probably you've already written about this but it hasn't come up yet here: it seems to me that providing a common UI for buying things from multiple vendors is what a retail store does. Instead of always going to farmer's market, sometimes we shop at a grocery store that buys food from many farmers. Walmart provides a standard UI for buying products from thousands of manufacturers, many in foreign countries. Ebay and Amazon provide a standard UI for buying things from millions of small online shops. Apple, Amazon, Google, and so on are all competing to be the best UI for buying recorded music from any musician.

Besides providing the UI, large retailers also do a valuable service for their retail customers by bargaining down their suppliers and setting quality standards. They use leverage that individual customers could never have, as John Kenneth Galbraith's pointed out when a wrote about "countervailing power".

Of course, the retailers themselves have their own interests, and how much they actually serve their customers varies - generally it's not as much as they claim. But the best ones could credibly claim that the serve their customers well and that you could simplify your life by always buying through them - so why aren't they VRM vendors already? [Read entire topic]

#49: Doc Searls (doc-searls) Thu 30 Aug 12 09:06

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 09:06:00 PDT

All the work around DNT -- Do Not Track -- are VRM in the sense that they give individuals both independence and means for engaging. As I said early on, this is very early stuff, but it is VRM. Examples: http://www.abine.com/ https://disconnect.me/ https://www.ghostery.com/ http://privacyscore.com/ http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/collusion/

Personal data stores, aka lockers, vaults, systems, clouds, etc., also meet the VRM definition. Examples: http://www.personal.com/ http://www.azigo.com/ http://personal-clouds.org/wiki/Main_Page http://lockerproject.org/ http://singly.com http://mydex.org/ http://www.qiyfoundation.org/en/ http://mydex.org/ http://www.paoga.com/ http://www.thecustomersvoice.com/ http://www.privowny.com/ http://zaarly.com http://thumbtack.com Then there's intentcasting: http://askforit.com/ http://ubokia.com http://offersby.me/ http://www.redbeacon.com/ https://bodyshopbids.com/

Those are all from the ProjectVRM development wiki page... http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/VRM_Development_Work ... which is far from complete.

None of these apps and projects are yet killer. But something will kill, soon enough. [Read entire topic]

#48: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Wed 29 Aug 12 04:43

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 04:43:00 PDT

What are some specific examples of VRM-ish applications currently in development? What makes them VRM? [Read entire topic]

#47: Doc Searls (doc-searls) Tue 28 Aug 12 18:22

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 18:22:00 PDT

The next step for ProjectVRM will be research. A lot TBD there, but it will start in the next year. There are lots of next steps for VRM companies and development projects. I'm looking forward to seeing progress shared at the next IIW <http://internetidentityworkshop> in October. I have speaking gigs coming up in Amsterdam, Toronto, London, Dallas and other places, plus a online webinars and such. Interested to see how those go as well.

For example, I'm curious to see how VRM work matches up not only with CRM but with CXPs -- customer experience professionals. They overlap to a degree with CRM, but are a different discipline. They're looking at customers gaining more control over their own experiences and wondering how that changes what CXP is all about.

And yes, I am hoping that the book inspires fresh thought and action, and I'd love to see others pick up the that thinking, my own and that of others, and run with it. [Read entire topic]

#46: Jon Lebkowsky (jonl) Tue 28 Aug 12 05:47

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:47:00 PDT

_The Intention Economy_ is written as a prompt for more conversation about the subject - you ask questions, and make it clear that you don't have all the answers (though you do cover a lot of ground, say a lot about how the Internet works and how it's transformed markets and eocnomies). What is your vision for next steps? Project VRM was an instigator of many tech developments that may become companies and applications. Similarly, are you hoping the book will inspire new streams of thought and action? Perhaps a body of related work authored by others? [Read entire topic]

#45: Doc Searls (doc-searls) Tue 28 Aug 12 05:24

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 05:24:00 PDT

I've got lots of material for The Giant Zero, and a lot of leverage-able writing, as well as a number of potential collaborators. But I won't start putting it together, I'm guessing, until about a year from now. That may change, but at the moment I'm focusing on The Intention Economy and some new work I'll be doing around journalism at NYU. Can't provide details on the latter yet. Stay tuned. :-) [Read entire topic]

#44: Ted Newcomb (tcn) Mon 27 Aug 12 06:36

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 06:36:00 PDT

Doc, can you tell us about your next book, The Giant Zero; how is that going, what will it cover, when will it be out? [Read entire topic]