image source : http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Gd6AxrhM2wE/TUcs7oE6EfI/AAAAAAAABUU/Tpp2fb6jeYM/s40...

Some scenarios to think about

Digital footprints are about how your data describes you - but as we start to game (gamification) with you and how you react, do we loose the purity of the signal?

Example....

option 1; your "like" is being bought by the competitions that say "like me and get a free iPad"  - you have been bought

option 2; your "like" is earned as you decide that you "like" something for a reason

             the original reason "A Facebook Like is supposed to show a user’s approval of a brand, product or piece of content"

option 3; Your "like" brings value to you and the community - self interest

Experian Hitwise calculated that a Like generates 20 visits to brand sites;

Deals platform ChompOn reckons a Like is worth $8, a Twitter follow worth $2 and an individual tweet worth $2 in additional sales of deals on its services.

A study by the CMO Council shows your likes can be gamed by asking you to enter a competition. Incentives are a common way to drive up Twitter followers, get positive "customer" reviews, posts and tweets and generate word of mouth. Sites like ReviewMe and Buy Twitter Followers even allow you to skip the incentive and buy results.

The outcome

Your SIGNALS are not pure and "Like" become  meaningless. Back to the drawing board - how do I find out what you "like" so I can sell you more?

This was a project I worked on for SWIFT*, lead internally by Peter Van Auwera  along with the Identity Gang: Gary Thompson, Doc Searls, Kaliya Hamlin, Drummond Reed, Andreas Weigend, Craig Burton, Mary Hodder, Don Thibeau, Scott David, and Peter Hinssen.

*SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications and is a global organization that each day handles financial transactions such as wire transfers for more than 9,000 banks, is preparing an expansion into data banking – helping to secure all types of digital exchanges.

The question: Can SWIFT succeed in doing what Microsoft and other tech titans famously failed to achieve and build something that is useful in the identity space? Microsoft tried to introduce something similar 10 years ago with its Passport and Hailstorm initiatives; Intel, Sun, Oracle and AOL attempted to develop such a service through a group called The Liberty Alliance

Background: Data is becoming a new type of raw material, on a par with capital and labour, according to a 2011 World Economic Forum report, Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class. Some of the largest Internet companies, including Google and Facebook reap most of the profits from collecting, aggregating, analyzing and monetizing personal data. Consumers have no control and little knowledge of what is being done with their data.

Scenario: It is desirable to put control and dissemination of personal data “back” into the hands of the individual. The idea is each person’s data would reside in an account where it would be controlled, traded and accounted for – much like a bank account. The services would be interoperable so that the data could be exchanged with other institutions and individuals globally. Users might even leverage their data in the same way money is leveraged for credit.

Trust: The WEF report says, “an essential requirement would be for the services to operate over a technical and legal infrastructure that is highly trusted.” That is where SWIFT comes in. It is a neutral organization that already operates a secure global network with an established legal framework, placing it in pole position to facilitate access to secure personal-data services.  SWIFT has a closed, highly reliable and secure network for interchange of money between the banks. The vision is that you could take that underlying infrastructure and make it more open and more interchangeable, and make it work between any entities.

The Proposal:  build a Digital Asset Grid as per the diagram. The arrows represent the new proposed SWIFT infrastructure service. This infrastructure would provide trusted and certified pointers to digital asset content and associated digital asset usage rights. An ecosystem of banks and other parties would build Digital Asset Services (blue boxes) that leverage this trusted infrastructure service. Users interact with the blue services and the underlying infrastructure via the selector and the weaver. The SELECTOR is a secure mechanism to manage the flow of claims. The WEAVER allows the “weaving” of digital assets with digital rights and the entities that receive those rights. Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 [The weaving concept was originally introduced at SIBOS in 2010: that talk can be heard here by Gary Thompson]

The Vision: The Digital Asset Grid is to move the SWIFT network and SWIFT services from a closed, single-purpose, and messaging-based system to an open, general-purpose, API-based system.

Next Steps: building a prototype in 2012 and finding a dance partner!

The web (if represented as a collection of pages) is based on some simple request-response mechanisms. I request a page and the server responds and gives me the page. End of that transaction. With the “dataweb” – a collection of Digital Assets and associated usage rights; there is a need for something where exchanging entities can perform a dance around and with the Digital Assets. And we want to be sure that they are who they say they are, and that they have the right usage rights to the digital assets. So we move from a two dimensional view of the world (in computer terms a “table”) to a multi-dimensional view (in computer terms a “graph”)

One of the many use cases for the Digital Asset Grid would be to solve compliance, Instead of moving messages from A to B, we keep the DATA where it originates and “point” to them with SWIFT certified pointers to where the data are located and the associated usage rights.

The dance protocol (full duplex) for this use case, from opening of the dance with (a “webhook” in technical terms), to the actual picking-up of the content, and closing the dance and everything in-between, could look like something like this:

·          PartyA: “hey, I am sending a signal that I wanna dance the tango (slang for payment instructions) with any party in the Swift dance hall at 9pm”

·          PartyB: “yep, I wanna dance with you, let’s meet in the SWIFT dance hall at the bar”

·          PartyA: “ok, here we are, cool place

·          PartyA: “Let’s get to business”

·          PartyA: “I just gave you following rights my payment instructions at this XRI: you have XDI pick-up rights”

·          PartyB: “ok, gotja. Will pick it up right away”

·          PartyB: “knock knock, I am coming to fetch those payment instructions”

·          PartyA: “let’s check if you have the usage rights….”

·          PartyA: “everything looks fine, go ahead”

·          PartyB: “loading, loading, loading…”

·          PartyB: “Ok I am done”

·          PartyA: “So am I”

·          PartyB: “tomorrow, same place same time to dance ?”

·          PartyA: “would love to

·          PartyB: “sure, bye bye”

·          PartyA: “bye bye”

I really enjoyed contributing to this project and it is a joy to work with a company that is open about innovation, the output and looking to engage at an early stage with the widest possible community. Well done @petervan and Kosta (@copernicc)

By background I am an engineer (electronics, maths and computing) and was bought up on control systems and feedback loops. I wrote extensively about the closed feedback business models for the web in Mobile Web 2.0 and now in My Digital Footprint – The approach is to collect data, analysis the data and then use the output to create a feedback loop which when combined with any real action/ activity – provide a stable closed loop control system – which is the business model.

I love it when others use the same old theories and engineering principals to show that taking the measurement of output back to the beginning to compare and contrast with reality gives a stable solution.

Our issue is still which signal to listen for…pulse, waves, spikes or trends

Image source : http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2011/11/data.html

Do all utilities/ commodities have a business model? 

Water, gas, coal, oil, data, wood, rock, stone, metals, minerals, fire, air all have business models but does time? Time of day, knowing time, time accuracy, use of time, time management, time and location, timing, down time, free time, branding, availability of time, portability of time, hiding time, future time, creating time, saving time, brokering time, trading time and selling time

Why the thought – is the model for “influence” one based on the business models of time?

1. Free in the wild hope that it will all be alright in the end

2. Selling data about users or providing access to your users

Selling profiled data about your users

3. Revenue from CPM display advertising on site

Ads served by the site owners (own or third-party ad network service) Income from number of ads severed on the basis of “cost per thousand”

4. Revenue from CPC advertising on site (pay per click text ads)

Advertisers are charged according to the number of times they are clicked.

5. Revenue from Sponsorship

Someone may wish to pay to advertise

6. Affiliate revenue (CPA, but could be CPC)

Commission revenue, paid on the basis that someone comes via you to buy a service and you get a cut - Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

7. Selling data about users or providing access to your users

Selling profiled data about your users (check the terms first)

8. Subscription (access to content)

            Simple and easy if you have something of unique value or brand

9. Revenue from Pay Per View access to document (DRM and lots of management – hard)

10. Mark-Up (transaction)

            Sell something for more than you buy it (don’t forget overheads)

11. Running the platform

            Build something that makes the other models easier to run

12. Paying users for their data (arbitrage)  

            Instead of selling customer data to third parties and keeping all the value – you pass some back

13. Less than Free – paying customers to use your service :)

The background (as of Dec 2012)

2006 founded, 100+ million active users per month, 50 million per day, over 250+ million tweets per day and currently 2,400 advertisers. Renewal of advertisers is 80% with 3 to 5% response – better than click through

The models

Cost Per Follower (CPF) : $2.50 to $4.00

Promoted Tweets: (PTw) : open to offers

Cost Per Engagement (CPE) $0.75- $2.50  [ where engagement = (Clicks + Favourites + Retweets + @Replies) / Impressions]

Worth 30 minutes - The Truth About How Twitter Is Making Money with chief revenue officer Adam Bain explains:
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In a study from Edgerank discovered new insights into the value of Facebook comments and likes. Every time a post gets liked, it receives approximately 3.1 clicks. For every comment, a post will receive 14.678 clicks, which is 4.73 times or almost 5 times as many clicks as a like. Edgerank also examined shares and clicks by day of the week, and discovered that Wednesday had both the highest shares and clicks ratios.

More results and graphs are on their blog.

Image http://trak.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/digitalwill.jpg

Emma Gaudern, Partner at BHP Law is advising clients to leave their usernames and passwords in letters or a document that can be held with their Wills to make it easier for executors to deal with all their affairs when they die.

Without passwords, relatives may never be able to access E-mail, internet banking and social networking for their loved ones which means things are left unfinished.

Some clients have started to include these details in their Wills, however it is important to now provide instructions on how to deal with their digital footprint and their online life, the same way they deal with their offline life. “It is important that information such as this is not inserted directly into the Will” says Emma“People forget that after they die their Will becomes a public document and therefore any passwords given in the Will itself will become a matter of public record. What they should do is note these details down separately and make sure they are stored safely with the Will so they can be easily found after a person dies.”

There is also the need for the regulation of online policy, allowing next of kin access to passwords etc to close accounts. Currently the different systems in place are very confusing and the process is taking different lengths of time and requiring a variety of documentation, sometimes it’s more difficult to close online accounts than bank accounts. This can be so easily resolved.

….

And don’t forget you are not allowed to log in as someone else ….

I am speaking next week at Fresh Thinking Series and this relates to one aspect of what I will be speaking about. What is your Digital Footprint worth and to whom?

The Fresh Thinking Series 2 gets underway next Tuesday (1st November) in London before moving on to Manchester. Keep in touch with the debate as it happens by following us on Twitter – @FreshThinkers – and by following the hashtag #FreshThinkers. 

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 “We love FREE. So much so that we don’t tend to question what it means to get something for free; other than when it seems too good to be true, it probably is. This, coupled with the fact that we like to be a customer and not a product, raises some questions in our increasingly digital lives. If we are not exchanging cash for something but there is a trade, what are you paying with? Or to look at it another way, what ‘value’ are we giving away?

The reality is that in many of life’s interactions and online experiences you pay and therefore you are a customer. However, when you don’t pay for something, you move from being the customer to being the product sold.

For example, if advertisers are paying on Facebook, who is the customer?

And further, “What is Facebook for?” Is it there to help you share with friends? Or to monetise your social graph?

So here lies the rub. There is a customer ( the advertiser) who wants you to spend more time telling them everything about yourself so you can gain access to more offers, more personalisation, more context and “Live the Dream!”

However, everyone else can also see what you say and what you do. The more care you take with what you share may reduce your product worthiness to social media but may increase your value to your employer and friends. There is a balance to be struck and I’ll be exploring this further next week at Fresh Thinking.

In the meantime here are some more social rules…. 

• Loyalty (to a service) is dead – you are free to your own boundaries
• Free is not free – Engagement, Relationship and Conversation have a price
• Open means you don’t want to hide and transparent means “it can be found” – but most people will not bother
• Learn the social (digital and physical) rules that apply to you group today but be aware they will be different tomorrow
• Money in a digital world has less ‘personal’ value than real money and is closer to swopping chickens for potatos.  Unlike cash, others are more prepared to cheat, lie, swindle and steal your digital money as it appears “virtual” and less actual.
• Un-friending is acceptable – being un-friended is a reality
• Realise your ability to annoy everyone
• Digital has one speed – fast, there are no breaks but plenty of fuel”

Background

Trust and Brands are interwoven like the double helix of DNA. A Brand is much more than the image, logo, name, awareness, experience, campaign, product or trademark. Whilst all of the above (and more) are essential components of a brand, the brand itself is the meeting of an ‘intention’ and a ‘promise’, a confluence that involves Trust. A recent Interbrand survey valued Coca-Cola at US$73 billion, Microsoft at US$70 billion and IBM at US$53 billion. Underpinning that value lies the experience the brand provides to it’s customers. The consumer experience comprises many things.

Today, the iPhone is a textbook case of a brand leveraging a consistent customer experience for it’s customers. The iPhone, and many other leading brands, provide both the experience and the Identity for the customer. My favourite example of a brand with timeless trust is Patek Philippe. The watch is called a ‘chronograph’. There are no prices on the site as far as I could see. The advertising shows that the watch is yours to experience and to ‘hand down to your child’ i.e. a tradition/legacy. This type of branding and the promise it depicts is truly timeless and will remain so.

Thus, Trust is beneficial for brands. Brands want to be trusted and indeed, some are trusted reflecting their market value.

But at the same time, the values, traditions and norms of society are changing and brands are reacting to that change. We see this in many ways – for example – Brands are displaying their “environmentally aware” credentials in response to greater awareness among consumers. The 2011 Edelman survey on Trust ranks financial institutions at the bottom of the ‘Trust’ scale. The survey  also indicates  attributes like Quality, transparency, Trust and Employee welfare as valued attributes by customers. It goes even further by finding that reputation enhances believability i.e. customers have to hear something about a specific company multiple times for them to believe that information. 26% have to hear the message 4 to 5 times and 59% have to hear it 3 to 5 times. In an era of current media scepticism, customers are influenced by multiple voices and multiple choices and the need for authority and accountability set new expectations for Brands.

The Algorithm lens, the Local lens and the changing balance of Power

However we define Trust, we acknowledge that Trust is  a two way processes.  Brands need Trust  and indeed customers trust some brands which is reflected the high market value of the best known brands. However, the nature of Trust in a brand is changing. The Web has led the first phase of this change as customers have become active and vocal. They are no longer passive consumers. The information they contribute transforms their relationship with brands and in some cases the Brand itself. Beginning in 2005 with the emergance of the Web 2.0 generation, two shifts happened: Firstly, Customers contributed data .Secondly, search engines harnessed that very data to create a ‘filter’ for our online world based on our data. Today, we are living the Social or Facebook era which takes the sharing of data to the personal level and by extension, extends the filter to the our social graph

Increasingly, with the greater availability of data, firms are simply ‘harnessing’ all this data which customers share. Today, the balance of power rests with the providers and with the firms which have the ability to capture data. We do not see the current generation (which we call ‘Screenagers’ – i.e. people who grow up interacting with multiple screens daily), sharing less data. On the contrary, the trend to share more will continue. We also see that companies will continue to harness that data and will provide more  services based on Data. This gives the perception that the balance of power has shifted away from the customers and towards the providers (such as Apple, Google, Amazon).

But the balance of power shift may not be so one sided.

Web orientated search engines put an ‘algorithm lens’ over online content. Mobility adds  a ‘local lens’ over both physical objects and online content. In other words, the web and mobile based search engines created rankings and thereby a filter or ‘lens’ for search results based on analysis outside of the control of the user. In a multiscreen world that the Screenagers inhabit, these multiple screens will be generative i.e. they will create their own data and by implication contribute to the  filters. This filtered data will be used by everyone, which means it could also be used by customers themselves. Customers will be able to see their world through this ‘lens’ of someone else’s data. Customers’ data could be harnessed by others but customers could also easily choose to share key data components and / or create a set of preferences that would ‘colour’ their world through their own data lens to their own benefit

This paradigm could bring back control to customers even when their freely available data can be harnessed by others. Thus, in this phase, all brands will be affected. Just like the Web 2.0 phase produced brands like Amazon and eBay, we will see the rise of new brands which will serve the customer especially when the Screenager mindset will be the dominant paradigm for societies (especially in cities) which affects our physical space. The foundation which drives this relationship will be data.

The Screenagers hypothesis

Data is already changing many areas that we once took for granted – ex Data driven journalism . Data is being released by governments, individuals and companies at a phenomenal rate. Over time, we expect that Open source, Open standard, Peer to Peer initiatives will arise to create this ‘lens’

So, the Screenagers hypothesis is:

a)    Brands will be expected to fulfil their promise but that will be only the minimal requirement

b)    Customers will continue to share data about themselves and about their brand preferences. This data will continue to be harnessed by providers. The rate of this behaviour (both sharing and harnessing) will increase

c)    Simultaneously, it will be possible for customers to harness their own data

d)    This data will act as a lens/filter for services

e)    This will profoundly change the relationship with brands and new brands will emerge to take advantage of this paradigm and serve the customer better

The screenagers event will explore this hypothesis in detail and will look at three axes i.e. Data, Benefits and Services to create a model to explore this hypothesis. We will explore these ideas in the Digital Footprint Summit Learnings and Insights from the Screenagers – Thursday, November 3, 2011 from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM (GMT)