It’s been a while since my last blog post. Curiously, that delay changed my mental model for conversations, especially online conversations.

Understanding conversations is, I think, one of the first steps to creating something amazing with VRM. Re-inventing the online search/advertising/sales conversation may just be the most important part of Vendor Relationship Management… but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Blogging is a global conversation. People anywhere can pick a topic, have their say, and if they say it well, find a self-organizing conversation group. As my friend Christian Gray once put it, people don’t blog to connect with other blogs. They blog to connect with other bloggers. And we do it through a decentralized online conversation enabled by the Internet.

In many ways, it is that simple. By saying something that matters, by adding to the shared conversation in a way that engenders response, we connect with others of a like-mind. Even when we disagree with folks, we’re still sharing a communal ritual of debate and argument, a conversation that connects us far more than it divides us.

So, what happens when I disappear for a bit? When I don’t blog for a while? What happens to that conversation? Well, that depends in large part on how others connect to me, on the nature of the “room” or “place” in which we are having the conversation. For those who like my contributions enough to subscribe to a feed or who get their news via searching the blogosphere at Technorati or Google, I might be missed, but will otherwise pop back into their news flow once I start posting again. This actually works great for me when reading blogs from Steve Gilmor, Abe Burmeister, and Steve Yegge, for example, who don’t blog frequently, but are worth reading when they do.

For folks that check in at blogs they like every so often to see what’s new, I’ve probably fallen off the radar after nearly two full months with just one post each. That’s not too good.

Of course, the pace of the conversation, for me, grinds to a halt, and maybe people have been wondering where I am, but when one returns, it is like rejoining a party already in progress. Maybe folks wonder why it took so long to return from wherever you went, but people are glad to see you. Well, some people, anyway.

So, that’s just one of the myriad interesting differences between conversations in the blogosphere and those in IM, forums, and email.

• Instant messaging–in whatever form you prefer–is all about the instant response. Say now, respond now. Short bits. More twitter, less dissertation. And usually extremely focused.
• IRC and public chat are curiously impersonal, more like a shared conversation at the local pub than the directed private chat.
• Forums have some of the permanence of blogging, but none of its vast, open territory. You have to go to a forum to participate, just like IRC or public chat. Forum conversations each have a place of their own, a place you “visit” to participate. Thanks to RSS, Technorati, and a culture of cross-linking, blogs don’t require that.
• Finally, email is usually a directed conversation; either one-to-one personal correspondence, or perhaps a focused mailing list on a specific topic. The former is hugely isolated from outsider input, while the latter isolates within a peer group of sorts. Outsiders are lucky to be able to view an archive.

In contrast, blog conversations are

• open,
• inclusionary,
• permanent,
• placeless, and
• fungible.

Anyone can contribute anything and there is a culture of supporting and encouraging contributions. There is generally excellent archiving as permalinks, yet without a sense of a “place” that one must go to to find a particular conversation. The conversation is happening in a sort of emergent global commons, a shared nexus of A-listers, C-listers, and people who just have something to say and don’t really care about lists. It extends over time and space, yet self-selects into internally coherent threads and discussions, and those threads evolve and change and reconnect as the conversation continues. It is amazing, frankly, a new thing, something that couldn’t have happened without the ubiquitous availability of the inherently decentralized wonderthing we know as the Internet.

All of which makes me think about how we might/can/should/must do something similar for VRM.

Vendor Relationship Management, as the reciprocal of CRM, puts the customer in control, providing tools to take charge of relationships with vendors, rather than passively accepting the role of “consumer”. My first thoughts focused on personal RFPs, a way to specify what you want as a consumer and drop that specification into a distributed marketspace where vendors reply and a purchase would be made. It is easy to imagine a blog, tag, and Pingerati style architecture creating a passable solution today, and even more exciting to think about how user-centric Identity could take it to another, higher level of security and privacy. This also seemed like a natural output after the type of Complex Search we are working to support at SwitchBook.

Good stuff.

And then, at the VRM Developers Meeting in Redwood City this last January (2007), the naive initial idea of the personal RFP evolved to embrace an interactive experience. What if a vendor needs clarification? What if none of the offers make sense? What if a Vendor has a near-miss soluton at a great price? The fact is, we regularly have rich conversations as we shop and buy things. Shouldn’t a VRM RFP support a rich conversation? After all, markets are conversations.

Add to that the opportunity for third parties to enhance that conversation. At that same developer meeting, we explored what “relationship” means in the real world and how we express ourselves in relationships. In the sales conversation, there are a lot of people involved, especially in higher price, more complex sales. In traditional sales channels, we are likely to have a manufacturer, a distributor, a retailer, each as institutions with multiple people involved in a web of relationships supporting the ultimate purchase.

I discussed previously how Shopatron is re-intermediating retailers in sales from manufacturers’ websites. Why? Because retailers add value, despite the heralding by pundits of a new, disintermediated marketplace. Shopatron is an illuminating example of how we can reinterpret offline relationships in the online marketplace.

Consider also the friendly salesperson, the kind you might find at your local shoe or clothing store. These people are knowledgeable about the products, help you find the right item, and can create a sense of humanity in what otherwise might feel like a semi-automated warehouse. Sometimes the variety and competitive pricing at a big-box discount retailer is compelling. Yet, there is also a lot to be said for the personal touch of a real person at the point of sale–witness the enduring success of the high-end boutique.

Why? Because good salespeople engage in a real conversations. Have you ever had a great buying experience with a salesperson that didn’t involve a conversation? So, where are the online sales agents? I have seen a few click-to-talk or real-time chat opportunities on some websites. And ChaCha applies that to agent-assisted search, yet perhaps they might do better by helping people buy things. So far none of these solutions yet seems to offer the power and flexibility I sense as latent potential in this medium.

So, that leaves me with a bunch of questions. How do we engage in user-centric conversations in a distributed marketplace? How do we enable third parties to constructively engage in market conversations? How can we leverage what we’ve learned from blogs, wikis, IM, email, and the web, to reinvent conversations between customers and vendors. And most importantly, how do we do it so that it dramatically increases the value to customers while creating or enhancing profits for vendors?

These are questions I’m going to enjoy figuring out.

Perhaps a bit of time off from blogging isn’t so bad after all.

p.s.
As always, I encourage you to check out Project VRM and join us if you want to help create the next generation of market conversations.

Jeremie recently asked “What does the R mean in VRM?”

The question I ask myself about VRM though is what does the Relationship mean? Many of the situations that have been proposed for VRM to play a role are Vendor (am I the only person to call them VenDUHs in conversations?) selection systems, where you establish a new relationship or transaction.

Absolutely right. I would call much of the conversation so far about Vendor discovery & selection, rather than just selection, but Jeremie’s point is still valid. Where’s the relationship? The idea of a personal digital RFP that people can use get bids from vendors in an open marketspace is powerful, but, by itself, would not fulfill Doc’s vision of VRM. As I mentioned previously, at a minimum, people need tools for the search before the RFP. Many of those searches will by inherently complex and could benefit from a tool that handles Complex Search. But there’s more…

People will also need tools to better handle their relationships. Today, those relationships are often codified in various forms of identity: credit cards, loyalty cards, membership cards, business cards, driver’s licenses, passports, issued by corporations (including public sector/govt. corporations), but they needn’t be. Doc Searls makes it clear in Turning the world I-side out:

All the identities in our wallets and purses, from social security numbers to credit card numbers to library and museum memberships, are given to us by organizations. More importantly, they represent “customer relationship management” (CRM) systems that at best respect a tiny fraction of who we are and what we might bring to a “relationship”. What CRM systems call a “relationship” is so confined, so minimal, so impoverished and so incomplete that it insults the word.

VRM turns that upside down, in part by placing identity firmly in a user-centric context–a context where Identity isn’t just accessible by the user, it is defined by the user. When users can define and apply their identities easily, the entire vendor/customer game changes.

When you can cost-effectively leverage your entire identity across multiple contexts without sacrificing privacy, you get more satisfying products at better prices. Soccer Moms can get time-saving family-friendly offers while twenty-something hipsters get access to a world of services perfect for their late-night indulgent lifestyle. And nobody needs to know when the Soccer Mom by day is also a twenty-something hipster by night. Everyone gets what they want and everyone gets more value without losing the sense of privacy we demand. Vendors make higher profits with more targetted offerings, all seamlessly available to anyone accessing the marketspace, with extremely low marginal costs.

Bringing this back to Jeremie’s question, my answer is that Vendor relationships are both dependent on, and assertions of, Identity. You can’t have a relationship with a vendor unless they can tell who you are.

Amazon can’t recommend new books unless they know the user. I can’t pay my gas company bill without my account number (or other way to identify myself).

Sometimes people leverage their relationship with one vendor at another, like I use my KCRW fringe benefits card to get a discount at Borders. The KCRW membership card is both a statement of my identity–as an assertion of my relationship with KCRW–and it is a modifier of my relationship with Borders–giving me discounts. I have a Borders membership card, but I haven’t figured out if I can link my KCRW identity with the Borders identity so I have to present both every time. If I could just have both relationships show up automagically when I use one of my credit cards, that would certainly make life easier. If I could set it up so that any company (or maybe just select companies) that offers KCRW fringe benefits (and no one else) automatically knows about my KCRW membership when it helps a transaction, I’d get all these benefits without hassle. And as long as the cashier reminds me of it, I’ll be able to spread that appreciation to both the KCRW and vendor’s brands appropriately. Private, automatic benefits, with explicit acknowledgement and branding.

In other words, give users control over their identities, and you give them control over their relationships. And everyone wins.

VRM needs interoperable Identity systems. VRM applies Identity to give users control over both vendor relationships and individual transactions. Vendor selection and discovery turn personal digital RFPs into new relationships while giving vendors you already have a relationship with an opportunity to participate in the process. As new vendors are discovered, they become new relationships, and the wonderful cycle continues.

VRM is definitely more that just vendor selection. With the power of Identity, it can truly reshape how people relate to vendors.

This year’s Man of the Year from Time Magazine is You.

All hail the power and relevance of the user centered revolution that started with Pong and continues into the future with VRM.

Pong? Yes, Pong, that simple little game that created the interactive entertainment industry. The great ancestor of Quake, The Sims, and Second Life. A bit of interactivity that started the great reversal of the industrial era of media. Mass production and mass media led to literal generations of couch potatoes and an American mono-culture dominated by the big three TV networks and the Hollywood Studios. Mass production of passive entertainment taught people to sit back, relax and just enjoy the show.

Interactive entartainment was, and is, fundamentally different. To get any value, you have to do something. You have to. It isn’t an option, it is a requirement. Fail to move the controller and the game ends in short order. No points. No advance levels. No victory animations. No stirring love story and climactic ending. While mass media teaches passivity, interactive media teaches pro-activity.

The Internet took the interactivity of single-context video games and extended it to a worldwide network of infinitely variable services and content. One of those services, the World Wide Web, made that interactive network visual and immediately accessible to hundreds of millions of people.

Now we have a new generation of entertainment, commerce, society, and even politics  built upon interactivity, where users’ actions drive the outcome. Powerful stuff. No wonder Time Magazine makes You Man of the Year for 2006.
Vendor Relationship Management, or VRM, is another one of those services built upon the interactive capability of the Internet. VRM creates an open marketspace where, with a single gesture, a person can create a market of one, where vendors compete on-demand for their purchases and relationships. As VRM goes from an inspiration to a working system, we will see users gaining even more and more control.

That makes me wonder, if this year’s man of the year is You, what does Time Magazine do when VRM really hits its stride?