Normally, I wouldn’t nitpick about this, but there are two key domains where this is vital and I’m knee deep in both: contracts and platforms.

Doc said:

Like, is the customer always the first party and the vendor the second party?

Well, no. So, some clarification.

First and second parties are like the first and second person voices in speech. The person speaking is the first person, and uses the first person voice (I, me, mine, myself). The person being addressed is the second person, and is addressed in the second person voice (you, your, yourself).

And

To sum it up, third parties mostly assist vendors. That is, they show up as helpers to vendors.

The first point is great, and if you continue this further (and make the leap from parties to data providers), you get something like this:

The ownership of “your” and “my” data is usually clear. However, ownership of the different types of “our” data is a challenge at best.  To complicate matters further, every instance of “my data” is somebody else’s “your data”. In every case, there is this mutually reciprocal relationship between us and them. In the VRM case, we usually think of the individual as owning “my data” and the vendor as owning “your data”, but for the vendor, the reverse is true: to them their data is “my data” and the individual’s data is “your data”. Similar dynamics occur when the other party is an individual. I bring my data, you bring your data, and together we’ll engage with “our” data. We need an approach that respects and applies to everyone’s data, you, me, them, everybody..

Which is from my post on data ownership. The trick is that 1st party and 2nd party perspectives are symmetrical.  We are their 2nd party and they are their 1st party. Whatever solution we come up with in the VRM world needs to work for everyone as their own 1st party. Everyone. Including “them”. Including Vendors.

In fact, that’s the only way we can get out of the client-server, subservient mentality of the web. It’s also the only way to make sure that our solutions work even when the “vendor” is our neighbor, our friend, or our family.

This is particularly clear in the work we are doing at the Kantara Initiative’s Information Sharing Work Group. We are creating a legal framework for protecting information individuals share with service providers. As such, it’s vital that the potential ambiguities of language are anchored in rigorous definitions. And what has emerged is that every transaction is covered by a contract between two parties. Not three. Not four. Not one. Two. And to the extent that third (or fourth) parties are mentioned, they are outsiders and not party to the contract. Since we are building a Trust Framework, there is a suite of contracts covering the different relationships in the system, but the legal obligations assumed in each contract have clear and unambiguous commitments between the first and second parties only.

Platforms

But where I think where Doc’s framing most needs a bit of correction is that, in fact, historically, third parties are never presumed to be working for second party. Not in the vernacular and not in any legal context. This presumption only emerges once you add a Fourth Party claiming that it works on behalf of the user. That is, 3rd-party-as-ally-of-the-2nd-Party is a corollary to Fourth Party concept, not a foundation for explaining it.

Take Skype, which I have on my Verizon cell phone. In the contract with Verizon, Skype is a third party application and Skype, Inc. is the third party.  But Skype isn’t working on Verizon’s behalf.

This is not only true in the sense of 3rd party applications whose value proposition is clearly at odds with the 2nd party, it is even more true when it comes to platforms. And especially when you consider the relevance of VRM as a platform for innovation.

In every platform, there are third parties who create apps that run on the platform. Microsoft built Windows, but Adobe built Photoshop. Apple built the iPhone, but Skype built Skype.  For platforms to be successful, they necessarily bring in 3rd party developers to build on top of the platform. These developers aren’t necessarily working on behalf of the platform provider, and it would be a miscarriage of alignment to claim that they are. They are out for themselves, usually by providing unique value to the end user. Some new widget that makes live better.

This becomes even more true when you are dealing with open platforms, or what I called Level 4 Platforms (building on Marc Andreeson’s The 3 Platforms You Meet on the Internet). In open platforms, you actually have 3rd parties helping contribute to the code base of the platform itself.  Netscape adds tables to HTML. Microsoft adds the <marquee> tag.  But here, it is even crazier to imagine that these 3rd parties are acting on behalf of the platform party… because there really isn’t a platform party. Nobody owns the Internet.

I think the right way to think about 4th Parties is that they have a fiduciary responsibility to the 1st party and 3rd parties may or may not.

Fourth Parties answer to the 1st party.

3rd Parties may not answer to anyone.

The term “ownership” simply brings too much baggage from the physical world, suggesting a win-lose, us-verses-them mentality that retards the development of rich, powerful services based on shared information.

Anyone up for sacred cow cheeseburgers?

I’m a member–and a big fan–of Steve Holcombe‘s “Data Ownership in the Cloud” LinkedIn group and I love the efforts of the Dataportability guys and am a big supporter of the Privacy and Public Policy work group at Kantara. There is a lot of good work being done by folks trying to figure out how to give people greater control over the use of data about them (privacy) and gain access to data they use or created (dataportability).

Unfortunately, sometimes the arguments behind these efforts are based on who owns–or who should own–the data. This is not just an intellectual debate or political rallying call, it often undermines our common efforts to build a better system.

Consider this:

1. Privacy as secrecy is dead
2. Data sharing is data copying
3. Transaction data has dual ownership
4. Yours, mine, & ours: Reality is complicated
5. Taking back ownership is confrontational

Privacy as secrecy is dead

First, the data is pretty much already out there. The issue isn’t “How do we keep data from bad people,” it’s “How do we keep people from doing bad things with data?” DRM and crypto and related technology as the sole means to prevent data leakage and data abuse are failures. Sooner or later, the bad guys break the system and get the data.  Sure, there are smart things we can do to protect ourselves. Just like we wear seatbelts and lock our front doors, we should also use SSL and multi-factor authentication, but we can’t count on technology to keep our secrets. We need solutions that work even when the secret is out.

In fact, privacy isn’t about information we keep secret. It is about information we have revealed to someone else with expectation of discretion, e.g., when we tell our doctor about our sexual activities. It’s no longer a secret from the Doctor, but because it is private, we have rules that keep the information from being used inappropriately. Most of the time, with most doctors, it works. Those few who break those rules are dealt with through legal means, both civil and criminal, as well as social approbation. So, because we inherently need to release data to different parties at different times, we can’t control it through secrecy alone. Instead, we need to build a framework for preventing abuse when others do have access to sensitive information. Like in the case with our doctor, we want our service providers to have the data they need to provide the highest quality services.

Data sharing is data copying

Second, in the world of atoms, there can only be one of a thing, which is the reverse of the world of bits. With atoms, even if there are copies, each copy is itself a singular thing. Selling, transferring, or stealing a thing precludes the original owner from continuing to use it.

This isn’t true for information, which can easily be sold, transfered, and stolen without disturbing the original version. In fact, the entire Internet is basically a copy machine, copying IP packets from router to router, as we “send” images, web pages, and emails from user to user and machine to machine–each time a new copy is created whether or not the originating copy is deleted. To think of bits as if they were ownable property leads to attempted solutions like DRM that try to technologically prevent access to the information within the data, which is only good until the first hacker cracks the code and distributes it themselves. Instead, if we build social and legal controls on use, we can give information more freely, but under terms set by each individual when they share that information. Enforced by social and legal rather than purely technological means, this makes the most of the low marginal cost of distributing  online, while retaining control for contributors.

Transaction data has dual ownership

Image via Wikipedia

Third, much interesting data is actually mutually owned… which means the other guy can already do whatever the heck they want with it.  Consider web attention data, the stream of digital crumbs representing the websites we’ve visited and any interactions at each: all our purchases, all our blog posts, all our searches. Everything. Some folks argue that we own that data and therefore have the right to control the use of it. But so too do the owners of the websites we’ve been visiting. We don’t own our http log entries at Amazon. Amazon does. In fact, in every instance where two parties interact, where we engage in some transaction with someone else, both parties are co-creating that information. As such, both parties own it. So, if we tie the issue of control to ownership, then we’ve already lost the battle, because every service provider has solid claims to ownership over the information stored in their log files, just as we, as individuals, own the browsing history stored on our hard drive by Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome.

In the movie Fast Times at Ridgemont High, in a confrontation with Mr. Hand, Spicoli argues “If I’m here and you’re here, doesn’t that make it our time?”  Just like the time shared between Spicoli and Mr. Hand, the information created by visiting a website is co-created and co-owned by both the visitor and the website.  Every single interaction between two endpoints on the web generates at least two owners of the underlying data.

This is not a minor issue. The courts have already ruled that if an email is stored for any period of time on a server, the owner of that server has a right to read the email.  So, when “my” email is out there at Gmail or AOL or on our company’s servers, know that it is also, legally, factually, and functionally, already their data.

Yours, mine, & ours: Reality is complicated

Fourth, when two parties come together for any reason, each brings their own data to the exchange. We need a framework that can handle that. Iain Henderson breaks down this complexity in a blog post about your data, my data, and our data, talking about an individual doing business with a vendor, for example, someone buying a car.

“My data” means data that I, as an individual have that is related to the transaction. It could include the kind of car I’m looking for, my budget, and estimates of my spouse’s requirements to approve of a new purchase.

“Your data” means data that the car dealer knows, including the actual cost of the vehicle, the number of units in inventory, the pace of sales, current buzz from other dealers.

“Our Data” means information that both parties have in common. That could be Shared Information, explicitly given by one party to the other in the course of the deal, such as a social security number so the dealer could run a credit check. It could be Mutual Information, generated by the very act of the transaction, such as the final sale price of the vehicle. Or, it could be Overlapping Information, which each party happens to know independently, such as the Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of a vehicle (which we found online before heading to the dealership).

The ownership of “your” and “my” data is usually clear. However, ownership of the different types of “our” data is a challenge at best.  To complicate matters further, every instance of “my data” is somebody else’s “your data”. In every case, there is this mutually reciprocal relationship between us and them. In the VRM case, we usually think of the individual as owning “my data” and the vendor as owning “your data”, but for the vendor, the reverse is true: to them their data is “my data” and the individual’s data is “your data”. Similar dynamics occur when the other party is an individual. I bring my data, you bring your data, and together we’ll engage with “our” data. We need an approach that respects and applies to everyone’s data, you, me, them, everybody.

In these complex Venn diagrams of ownership, it is more important who controls the data than who owns it.  We’ve already lost the crudest form of control–secrecy–and we are going to continue to lose more as we opt-in to seductive new services based on divulging more and more information: our purchase history, browsing activity, and real-world location data. But we still need to control how all this data is used, to protect our own interests while still enjoying the benefits of the great big copy machine that is the Internet.

Taking back ownership is confrontational

© Regien Paassen | Dreamstime.com

Fifth, we don’t need to pick a fight to change the game. There is a lot of data out there that many of us believe we should have control over. I agree. A lot of people argue that we should have the right to exclude other people’s use because we own the data, because it’s ours in some legal, moral, or ethical framework. The problem is, those other people already have it, and they also believe that they are legitimate owners. In fact, many of them paid for that data, buying it from data aggregators who compile all sorts of things about people, from both public and private sources. This entire ecosystem of customer data is a multi-billion dollar business and every single player “owns” the data they are working with. So if we focus our energy in claiming ownership over that same data in order to take control, we are framing the conversation as a fight, a fight against a powerful, well-healed, well-funded, entrenched bunch of opponents.

Most of these “opponents” are the very people we are trying to win over to our way of thinking. These are the vendors we want to embrace a new way to do business. These are the technologists we want to transform their proven, value-generating CRM systems to work with our data on our terms, instead of their data on their terms. Arguing over ownership puts these potential allies on the defensive, when what we really want is their collaboration.

From Ownership to Authority, Rights, and Responsibilities

Rather than building a regime based on data ownership, I believe we would be better served by building one based on authority, rights, and responsibilities. That is, based on Information Sharing.

• Who has the authority to control access and use of particular information?
• What rights does a party have in using and distributing a piece of information?
• What responsibilities does an information user have to others with respect to that information?

Let’s stop arguing about who owns what and start figuring out how we can share information in ways that allow everyone to win.

When we collect all of our information into a single conceptual repository, and then share access to it with service providers on our own terms, we create a high quality, highly relevant, curated personal data store. This allows us to bootstrap a control regime over all of our data in a way that creates new value for us and for our service providers. Now, instead of iTunes Genius or a Last.FM scrobbler only having access to our media use with their service, they can provide recommendations based on all the information stored in our personal audio data store. We get better recommendations and they get better data to drive their services. This personal data store is entirely under the authority of the user, sharing information with service providers according to specific rights and responsibilities.

The Information Sharing approach neatly sidesteps the complexities involved in privacy and dataportability issues of the information already known by service providers. These remain serious issues, worth addressing. Resolving them will require long term investment in the legal, regulatory, moral, and political systems that govern our society. Fortunately, sharing the information in our personal data store can begin almost immediately once we have working specifications.

This controlled sharing of information will dramatically increase our comfort level when revealing our intentions and interests. We would have control over the use–and would be able to prevent abuse–of that information, while making it easy for service providers to improve our lives in countless ways.

At the Information Sharing Work Group at the Kantara Initiative, Iain Henderson and I are leading a conversation to create a framework for sharing information with service providers, online and off. We are coordinating with folks involved in privacy and dataportability and distinguish our effort by focusing on new information, information created for the purposes of sharing with others to enable a better service experience. Our goal is to create the technical and legal framework for Information Sharing that both protects the individual and enables new services built on previously unshared and unsharable information. In short, we are setting aside the questions of data ownership and focusing on the means for individuals to control that magical, digital pixie dust we sprinkle across every website we visit.

Image by hegarty_david via Flickr

Because the fact is, we want to share information. We want Google to know what we are searching for. We want Orbitz to know where we want to fly. We want Cars.com to know the kind of car we are looking for.

We just don’t want that information to be abused. We don’t want to be spammed, telemarketed, and adverblasted to death. We don’t want companies stockpiling vast data warehouses of personal information outside of our control. We don’t want to be exploited by corporations leveraging asymmetric power to force us to divulge and relinquish control over our addresses, dates of birth, and the names of our friends and family.

What we want is to share our information, on our terms. We want to protect our interests and enable service providers to do truly amazing things for us and on our behalf. This is the promise of the digital age: fabulous new services, under the guidance and control of each of us, individually.

And that is precisely what Information Sharing work group at Kantara is enabling.

The work is a continuation of several years of collaboration with Doc Searls and others at ProjectVRM. We’re building on the principles and conversations of Vendor Relationship Management and User Driven Services to create an industry standard for a legal and technical solution to individually-driven Information Sharing.

Our work group, like all Kantara work groups, is open to all contributors–and non-contributing participants–at no cost.  I invite everyone interested in helping create a user-driven world to join us.

It should be an exciting future.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award Number IIP-08488990. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

I’m looking forward to writing a bit more this year, opening the conversation up about portable contexts and user driven services. My work with Project VRM and the Kantara Initiative‘s Information Sharing and User-Managed Access Work Groups will continue to be a big part of that.

I’m also looking forward to some interesting new product and service releases, from SwitchBook, MyDex, The Mine!, and others in the VRM community, as well as updates and innovations from Scanaroo, Kynetx and Azigo and others. Also, Doc Searls‘ upcoming book on the Intention Economy promises to be an intriguing read. It should be a good year for VRM.

Best of luck to you and for your own plans for 2010. May it be a stand-out year for all of us.

I’m still haunted by hearing that users get a maximum number Twitter postings (tweets) before the old ones scroll off. If true, it means Twitter is a whiteboard, made to be erased after awhile. The fact that few know what the deal is, exactly, also makes my point. Not many people expect anybody, including themselves, to revisit old tweets.

The flow-by web is great for sampling the current pulse of selected friends, an ephemeral dipping of the news ladel into a current river of updates. Yet it is also a place where people share things they often don’t share elsewhere, which makes it a great fishing pond for lightweight pointers to interesting media.

I have often used my own tweet stream–or others’–as a reference point when looking for websites or YouTube videos I first saw in the update stream. This happens consistently with media that’s fun enough to tweet but not important enough to blog. Often, in ordinary conversations, I find myself referring to resources I linked to in a prior tweet. Sometimes I just piont them to my Twitter account. Other times, I look it up myself and email the link.

Perhaps that works for me more than most because I don’t tweet that frequently, so my history is relatively compact. However, everyone’s tweets stick around, see My First Tweet as a case in point. In fact, it is perhaps more problematic that people consider these tweets gone, when, in fact, they are not.   Even though it is possible to delete your tweets from you stream history, it doesn’t remove them from all the downstream syndicators and third-party clients.

People should have more control over the lifetime of our shared information. In particular, it seems to me that people should be able to share information in one of two modes: at-will and on-the-record.

At-will posts can be erased by the owner at will, whenever they want, thus avoiding those embarrassing photos–and the resulting oppression from the future that keeps us from living fully in the present.

On-the-record posts are taken to be additions to the permanent record, with all parties understanding that they will be (or should be) always accessible. This allows for statement by officials operating in their official function, statements of policy, contractual agreements, and similar permanent records.

Everyone should be able to decide in which mode they want to share information, just as we can select a Creative Commons license as an alternative to copyright.  A simple microformat-style tagging system would go a long way to enabling a self-asserted, voluntary compliance approach.  Even better would be a data sharing protocol that could actually assure that compliant parties erase the at-will data when we no longer want those hot tubbing photos shared publicly.

Instead, we currently have a lot of frustration and surprises when people share information in one context only to find it appearing in another, undesirable one, some unpredictable time in the future. SMS messages, emails and Facebook photos, all show up in the most inopportune places and times. Managing these contexts–and the information we share in each–is vital in a world where we fluidly flip contexts as quickly as kaleidescopes change color.

As a co-proposer of the User Managed Access working group and acting co-chair of the User Driven & Volunteered Personal Information workgroups at Kantara, I am hoping we can find a way to make this new model work. Because the current model is too fragmented to be managed reasonably, and it is only going to fragment further unless we start to unify around user-driven principles or something similar.

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The premise is simple: if users know they are safe giving personal data, they will give it more freely. Limits on long term data mining (and its attendant offensive behavior of junk mail, spam, and telemarketing) paradoxically increase data sharing and enhance the ability of vendors to provide more meaningful engagement at the moment of the transaction. Less long term data retention leads to more real-time data provided by users, resulting in better customer experiences, and more profit for vendors.

Until recently, this was a theoretical argument, a belief by those of us promoting VRM. As Doc Searls puts it, “A free customer is more valuable than a captive one.”

Now we have evidence of just how valuable that can be.

Jared Spool shares with us the real-world example of a redesign in the direction of the “One Night Stand” that created $300 million in value in the first year: [excerpt edited for brevity. see full article for details]

Now that’s real money.

Hat tip to Abhijit Nadgouda of iface thoughts.

Problem Domain

The distributed nature of the web is a big part of its power–nobody needs to ask permission from a central authority to use it or create with it. However, that disaggregation limits the cohesion for sophisticated uses, leaving users to hobble together ad-hoc mash-ups of value from multiple, diverse service providers.

For example, the average travel planner spends 29 days from their first query to their first purchase. No tool I know of facilitates that entire process effectively.

Solving this problem in a general way—while retaining the authority of the individual and the flexibility of open systems—is perhaps the greatest opportunity for VRM. The personal data store and VRM relationship services are two prongs of an architectural shift for enabling this kind of aggregation while remaining open. Once you put the user in the driver’s seat, with coherent controls over the flow and the data, the experience can integrate around the user, even as they drive anywhere on the Internet.

Solution

Kynetx’s solution is built on one primary capability:

A rules engine (and language) for contextual customization based on strong identity-based claims, using the user-centric Identity of Information Cards.

This puts Kynetx squarely in the web augmentation service business. Adaptive Blue (and their Glue product) is perhaps the most sophisticated approach to this space, but Yahoo’s Toolbar also augments web pages, as does Skype (putting its SkypOut button on any phone # it recognizes), and the granddaddies of all web-augmentation services are the ad blocker plug-ins that remove banner ads on websites.

I distinguish web augmentation from web media enhancements, like PDF and Flash and Java, in that the latter are embeddable or downloadable extensions to the core HTML/http architecture of the web, while augmentation services provide third-party manipulation of website presentation on behalf of the user. They actually tweak the web page as the user sees it, rather than offering websites a new way to package content or functionality.

Web augmentation isn’t new, but it is gaining adoption and breadth. There is a low-grade market war going on in this space. While browsers define the official battleground of the World Wide Web; augmentation services are the guerilla warriors of next generation browsing. The approach that reaches ubiquity first will create significant value throughout the architecture: for users, software vendors, and service providers.

So, the question that comes to my mind is where does Kynetx fit into all of this?

The value proposition of a rules-engine for customization is powerful, if that engine makes it easy to leverage strong identity. Every website will, imo, want to take advantage of the unique value of user-centric identity and  Information Cards in particular. However, rewriting your customization to do that will take resources and that will slow adoption. If Kynetx can simplify how websites plug- in to the Identity meta-layer that sounds like a real value.

Gaps

There are however, several gaps that I see in Kynetix’s approach mapped out in the white paper.

First, who are the target developers: websites or Third party services. Or both?

It’s not clear to me if the primary authors of KRL rulesets (and hence Kynetx’s customers) will be the destination website developers or third party augmentation services. For example, . Adaptive Blue‘s Glue augments web pages so that things like movies can be recognized across domains for social commentary, ratings, and sharing. That means that Glue modifies the presentation of web pages at IMDB, Netflix, Amazon, Blockbuster, etc. In this pattern, it is the third-party, Glue, that would be running KRL rulesets, not the websites.

Is this the intended architecture for Kynetx? Is the point of the Kynetx Information Card to provide authorization by the user to allow services like Glue to augment their web experience, while the rest of the plug- in handles injection into the web page within the browser?

Or, is the main point that web services themselves would leverage Kynetx’s Information Card approach to manage third party identity for customization? For example, so Hertz could seamlessly provide AAA or AARP discounts if, and only if, the appropriate AAA or AARP information cards (KIX) are presented by the user? In this case, Hertz writes the customization, but doesn’t need to know upfront what the user’s affiliations might be.

If the first case is intended, the white paper doesn’t do a good job explaining how this fits into a larger, open ecosystem, nor does it highlight this unique architectural opportunity. If a user wants Orbitz to help augment its travel planning experience, even when it is at Expedia or Southwest airlines or Hilton.com, it would be great to do that in a secure, authorized, privacy-sensitive way. But it isn’t quite clear if this is the point of Kynetx’s approach. (Although it is a great opportunity, one that r-buttons and SwitchBook see in the not-so-far future).

If the second case is the goal, it isn’t clear to me why Kynetx is better than other customization frameworks. With a card selector and cards issued from the right authority, users can already present AAA or AARP credentials to websites, which in turn can integrate that information into their existing CMS or other presentation code (Drupal, PHP, perl, Ruby-on-Rails, etc.). If the value proposition is in speed-to-market for identity-based customization, then the white paper needs to make that case first and foremost. If that’s the goal, then it also suggests a business model, which I talk about in a bit.

It could also be that both of these are part of the approach: allowing both the website developer and third parties augment the web experience based on strong identity. This is the general idea behind r-buttons and would almost certainly speed deployment. However, the white paper doesn’t address the issues of contention when multiple providers want to augment the same page. Given the open-ended javascript functionality associated with a KIX, this could be a challenge.

Second, isn’t re-aggregation actually about creating a coherent context?

While the Kynetx approach allows users to present a particular relationship at a particular website, that doesn’t seem to solve the stated problem. I don’t see how it actually achieves a cross-web aggregated experience. In fact, it seems that the best aggregated experience should combine many relationship cards at many different services. In the 29-day travel planning scenario, won’t users need to send their AAA and AARP cards to every site they visit? (Or some large subset?) Does the card selector require a ceremony for every website every session? Or just once and then it is a permanent approval, such as confirming once with Expedia that the user is a AAA member? Managing this A x B complexity with A Information Cards and B websites scales poorly if every site has a distinct ceremony–and even worse if each card presented at each site is a distinct ceremony.

This apparent model of KIX based aggregation seems to miss an opportunity, one that is near to my heart as the core of the Search Map architecture for User-driven Search. It seems to me that for a given web-based task–such as travel planning–what you need is a user-driven personal data store that tracks the user’s progress across the Web. This data store should be 100% transparent, 100% editable, and seamlessly transferable/accessible to authorized vendors under terms controled by the user. We call our version of this a Search Map, an electronic document that provides the user a concrete way to manage and express their Search intent. It is also a seamless way to manage and express user context.

In the white paper, Phil asserts that “users are freed from managing episode context themselves” as a core benefit. But, I don’t think this is actually a benefit. Attempting to achieve that goal could end up being more patronizing than useful, following in the footsteps of “Clippy” the Microsoft Windows help agent which tried to figure out the context and help users, but failed miserably. “I see you are writing a letter. Would you like assistance?” Ack!

It’s not that users don’t want to manage their context, it’s that they haven’t been given simple, value-producing tools to do so. Consider spreadsheets: it’s not that users want to balance the budget on a computer—doing budgets on a computer isn’t inherently rewarding. It’s that spreadsheets make it easy to get value out of balancing their budget on the computer. Managing KIX across 29 days of travel planning and potentially a hundred+ websites sounds like a chore… unless we have a coherent expression of the context (in something like a Search Map, perhaps) that is easy to use and immediately useful.

Third, over-centralization limits scale.

The Kynetx model, as I understand it, doesn’t scale to the full World Wide Web, because it centralizes two core functions: resolving requests for augmentation and the validation of injection javascript as safe, private, and secure. Both of these constrain the growth opportunity for a KRL-based approach to augmenting web services. First, it places the core usage-time server demand on a single service. Given the business model of charging for ruleset evaluations, there is no obvious incentive for Kynetx to release an open source reference implementation to make it easier for alternate KRE service providers. In fact, there is every expectation that Kynetx will be motivated to “win the market share” battle and be the primary KRE service. Which, unfortunately, makes it just another silo, and will face precisely the same sort of scaling issues that plague Twitter. Second, by making Kinetx the arbiter of “quality” it places a single entity in control ofwhat constitutes “safe”. Even with good intentions, such centralized moral authority is not just dangerous, it alienates potential innovation. Nobody wants to be forced to seek permission for their new functionality. That was, IMO, the primary reason the World Wide Web dominated AOL so quickly.

The way to reach web scale is to make it absolutely trivial for /anyone/ to play the game. Several open source implementations and open standards enabled anyone who wanted to, to set up their own web server and try out the World Wide Web as a service provider. And, despite that lack of central control, lots of companies made lots of money providing enhanced software to manage those systems. So don’t fall for the illusion that central control is required or desirable for a big financial win.

Signing software is understood technology; we can enable signed KIX functionality with a validated identity as a first step towards quality control. Then, by opening up the validation service–and separating it from the distribution/matching of those KIX functions, we can allow software developers and service providers the freedom to innovate and provide their own approaches to what is valid and what isn’t. Some providers will choose to accept ANY signed KIX and simply track reputation. Others will charge a fee for developers, but run through a quality control check and review. By opening it up, you allow users and developers the freedom to manage KIX quality however they like, without building a presumptive “download at your own risk” ecosystem.

With Kynetx the sole authority on “quality” for KIX functionality, we would have both a technical and a political bottleneck that would retard the adoption of a generalized approach to the disaggregated web experience.

[Btw, it would be great if there were a name for the javascript injected into the browser when a KRL rule fires after evaluating the context and the user identity. This is currently just the "associated KIX functionality", which is a bit wordy.]

Fourth, what about privacy and data rights management?

On the whole, it isn’t clear to me what data might be sent around in the claims of various Information Cards, but there is no discussion in the white paper about the data rights associated with that information. If I’m telling Hertz that I’m an AARP member, can they use that data to start sending me junk mail or SPAM targeting AARP members? Frankly, this is a hole in the entire user-centric Identity framework. OpenID Attribute Exchange and Information Cards allow users to use a third party service for the management and presentment of minimally sophisticated facets of identity (much better than username & password), but neither inherently enables users to specify a data rights regime for the claims or attributes so provisioned. In effect, we’ve made it easy for users to provide additional data about themselves, but missed the opportunity for users to easily control the use of that data.

Since Kynetx has a goal of seamlessly augmenting users’ web experience, isn’t it incumbant on them to assure that seamlessness both protects users’ right to privacy and prevents unintended over-customization based on supposedly private data? This is another manifestation of the “Tivo thinks I’m gay” problem, where Tivo analyzes viewing behavior and assumes things about the user, with no way for the user to manage their profile. The data rights problem happens because there is nothing to keep Tivo from telling Hertz, GE, or NBC they think the user is gay. The problem in the Kynetx approach happens when service providers start passing presumably private data to third parties—and users lack the means to control that leakage once the service provider knows certain data. This level of data rights control needs to be built in from the start for VRM and user-driven applications.

Business Model

At the core, I think the business model needs rethinking. Although a CPM-based pricing for KRL evaluations seems to align the value proposition directly with costs, it actually presents more risk and less control to potential customers than other models. It also presents greater risk and less stability for Kynetx itself.

What service providers and developers want to see in a technology platform is one with a free entry point (so you can get testing and trying it ASAP, even if a production system would need a for-fee license), a constrained, predictable cost structure, and economies of scale. Charging per evaluation offers none of these.

This model instead creates an artificial scarcity and then charges by the drop. What you want is to create abundance and sell buckets and hoses and pumps. Doc calls this the “because of” effect. Constraining KRL evaluation to support a pay-by-drink business model will artificially constrain adoption. Instead, run to ubiquity and sell the best tools for leveraging the system you’ve helped create.

At the same time, the evaluation of rulesets will have highly variable demand, with great spikes and drops far outside of Kynetx’s control. Tying revenue to that demand volatility means an unpredictable, wild revenue profile, flattening out only with insanely large numbers of users. This works for mega services like Amazon Web Services, but for a start up moving from initial revenue to predictable cash flow, it can be unsettling. In contrast, an IDE sales model or subscription based service with monthly fees bounds developer expenses and stabilizes the revenue curve.

I like the idea of KRL rulesets. Currently, SwitchBook is planning on using Javascript, RegEx, and XPath, for similar evaluations. That approach not only feels ad-hoc, it is. I’d like to see a unified approach that is flexible, cross-platform, and supported by a good development and test environment.

I think Kynetx could go far by creating an open source platform for KRL rulesets, then providing a robust IDE and testing framework for those who want to manage KRL rules to meet business needs. I think this is nicely pointed to in the mention in the White Paper of A/B testing with different KRLs. This is precisely the kind of sophistication that businesses will need to make the most of KRLs and which can easily be separated from the core infrastructure that enables KRLs in an open way for everybody. Also, the consulting opportunities to analyze, customize, and manage KRL rulesets is a huge business opportunity. Doing that well is likely to remain a black art for a long time to come; helping Fortune 1000 companies do it well should be lucrative.

As Dale Olds put it referring to Novel’s Bandit Project: First, enable an open identity-metasystem, then sell tools to companies to help them manage it.

Collaborations

I like the value proposition of platform-independent identity-based customization. It fits well with VRM’s r-buttons, MyDex’s Personal Data Store service, and SwitchBook’s Search Maps. I think there’s still some brain work to be done figuring out how we can all support each other and simultaneously build sustainable business models, but I’ve no doubt there’s a way if we all invest in exploring those opportunities. Although I focused on questions and concerns about Kynetx in this post, I have great respect for Phil and hope to work with him as both our companies–and the entire VRM community–build out viable solutions to these kinds of problems.

I’ve mentioned Google Notebook briefly in the past, as a tool for helping with user-driven searches (more) — or complex searches as I used to call them. Unfortunately, Google never connected the notebook with Search, despite it being a reasonable solution for keeping track of the kind of discoveries you find when doing advanced searches at a lot of different websites.

Instead, Google suggests you try one of their other products:

If you haven’t used Notebook in the past, we invite you to explore the other Google products that offer Notebook-like functionality. Here are a few examples, all of which are being actively improved and should meet your needs:

• SearchWiki – We recently launched a feature on Search that will let you re-rank, comment, and personalize your search results. This is useful when you’ve found some results on Google Search that were really perfect for your query. You can read about how to use SearchWiki in this blog post.

• Google Docs – If you’re trying to jot down some quick notes, or create a document that you can share with others, check out Google Docs.

• Tasks in Gmail – For a lightweight way to generate a todo list or keep track of things, we recently launched Tasks in Gmail Labs.

• Google Bookmarks – For a tool that can help you remember web pages that you liked and access them easily, take a look at Google Bookmarks. You can even add labels to your bookmarks to better organize and revisit them.

Sigh.

Google Notebook fit a unique spot in the Google product portfolio, and as you can see in the comments on the announcement, a lot of people will miss it.

It’s too bad we don’t have our Search organizer product ready, I’d love to swoop in and save the day for all those wayward soles stuck without their Google Notebook. The future holds promise… Still, there something to be gleaned from Google’s recent developments. As I’ve said before, Search is bigger than query/response. And at least some parts of Google know it. But I wonder how much of the rest of the company gets it.

Take SearchWiki for example. Google rolled this out in November of last year. If you use Google through a Google account, SearchWiki gives you three new icons on every result:

• promote
• delete
• comment

Promoting an item moves it to the top of the result list. Delete, predictably, removes it from the results and Comment adds a comment to that result.  The first two are private–only you see the effect of promotions and deletions, while comments are public.

It is an interesting experiment, if only because it shows how seriously Google takes Wikipedia as competition; the functionality is nearly identical to Wikipedia’s search engine, Wikia. (And many of us have noticed how often Wikipedia entries show up early in Google results.)

It also shows a growing belief that users can help improve Search if they are actively involved. We don’t know what Google is doing with all the user data of who deleted or promoted what, but it will be fun to watch and find out. It will certainly present a different reference frame than PageRank–the core algorithm behind Google–which focuses entirely on the authority of HTML authors and the hyperlinks they put in web pages. If they shift the focus of their ranking to the actions of every day users, Google would shift the moral authority behind their results from web page creators to web page visitors–a much more representative population. That’d be pretty cool.

Unfortunately, the problem with SearchWiki is that it pivots on keywords rather than a more durable concept of Search. It turns out that the promotions and deletions apply only to subsequent queries with the exact same keywords.

Seriously.

For example, let’s say you search Google for “travel” and delete Travelocity, Expedia, and CheapTickets, because you’ve already tried those sites and are looking for something new. Then after browsing a bit, you realize you want to see websites for air travel, so you change the query to “air travel”. Suprise!  All those results you deleted are back in the list.

This is more than useless, it makes you feel like all that effort to promote and delete was completely wasted. We know that keywords evolve during advanced Searches. As we explore more of the web, we learn more about what we are looking for and which keywords might work better. And yet, Google’s SearchWiki remains fixated on the keyword query as the central point for tracking user feedback for these kinds of advanced searches–because really, who is going to promote and delete results for one-off, simple searches like finding the phone number for a restaurant? SearchWiki seems like it should be most useful for Searches that take us to dozens and dozens of websites, over days, weeks, even months. And yet, its focus on keywords to track promotions, deletions and comments means SearchWiki is practically useless for anything but the most simplistic queries.

What advanced Searches call for is a tool that helps users track a specific Search across the entire web. One that tracks both explicit and implicit data about the search, lets users organize that data on their own terms, and then lets them share that data with anyone that might be able to help their Search. This combination of keyword queries, clickthroughs, and web captures would be an invaluable representation of their Search Intent. When captured on the user’s behalf, it is a great example of the VRM concept of the user as the point of integration. At SwitchBook, we call the resulting document a Search Map.

Search Maps put the user in charge of all the data related to their Search. Search Maps enable true  user-driven searches (more), where the individual’s Search intent is effortlessly created, easily managed, and expressed to precisely those who can help the most. It is co-created with the user, with full transparency and editability. It allows a complete view of a particular search, organized and confirmed by the user.  It can be sent to any online service that can explicitly acknowledge the user’s own Terms of Use, specifying just exactly how that data can be used. The result is a verified, accurate representation of what the user is looking for right now, ready to be used by any Recommendation Provider capable of respecting the user’s data rights and then responding intelligently to the content of that Search Map.

Search Maps are at the core of SwitchBook’s approach to User-driven Search. We’re working with Doc Searls and the VRM community to explore how Search Maps work, how they can meet the needs of users, and how they can appropriately protect users’ privacy and interests when used to manage and express Search intent.

We hope to discuss this more at the Spring 2009 VRM Workshop, tentatively scheduled for March 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, somewhere on the West Coast. If User-driven Search intrigues you, save the date and look for future announcements on the VRM discussion list. We’d love to see you there.

At VRM2008 in Munich and at IIW in Mountain View, I started a conversation about User-Driven Search, the premise: what would it mean for users to truly drive their searches?

User-driven is a new term that came out of the VRM community riffing on the meaning of user-centric development and user-centric identity. User-centric is a nice term, but it could be construed as limiting. For example, user –centric definitely implies that that the user is at the center of attention and the focus of the architecture, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the user is in charge of the experience. That’s a key distinction.

Not just tuna salad

Adriana explains this difference between user-centric and user-driven as metaphorically the difference between buying ready-made tuna salad or picking and choosing your own ingredients and making the tuna salad yourself. When I first talked with Doc about user-driven instead of user-centric, Jim Carrey’s The Truman Show immediately sprang to mind: from birth, Truman is the protagonist in a huge reality show revolving around him… only he doesn’t know it. The climax of the show is Truman discovering the rest of the world and confronting his father/producer. Clearly the Truman Show is Truman-centric… but it is most definitely not Truman-driven.

It’s about impetus and authority

For me, user-driven means that the user provides the impetus and is the controlling authority throughout the transaction. Sure, sometimes there is negotiation or collaboration with others… the user isn’t omnipotent, after all. However, the user is in charge of creating his or her own experience. This fits with user-constructed or customized solutions, like the tuna salad recipe. However, it has implications far beyond the limits user-created or user-customizable architectures.

Is the user initiating the experience? Is the user’s moral authority the primary control throughout the system? Is the system transparent to users, enabling them to make their own informed decisions about what will be presented to them and how it is presented? Is it the user who is shaping the input, intermediary results, and final outcome? If so, then it is user-driven. If not, it isn’t.

When it comes to the tuna salad metaphor, this is the equivalent of the tuna salad being made when I ask for it and on my terms. Not before. And although I could choose to make the salad myself–that is definitely user-driven–it could also be made by someone else to my specifications… extra mayo and black pepper, no onions, thank you.

Search as user-driven

Google’s keyword query-response approach to Search is, of course, user-driven to some extent. Nothing happens until the user enters a query, users are free to enter any query, and the system responds with results tailored for exactly what the user queried. The user does shape the experience to a limited degree. And yet, it still provides only a slim façade of user control. There is no way to modulate the algorithm, no way to let Google know which results are good or bad, and no way to refine the search other than keyword guessing games. And, perhaps most importantly, there is no way to manage the search beyond the immediate query. For that, the user is dependent on other techniques: bookmarking, cut & paste, opening multiple windows or tabs, even printing to paper or PDF to keep track of good finds. Evolution in Search History management is starting in the right direction, but the ideas here have been rather uninspiring so far.

User-driven systems create value inherently

The limits on the user-driven aspects of Google are particularly ironic given that it is precisely the element of user control that creates Google’s greatest asset: focused attention. Google’s money making asset is the collection of user-specified queries, queries that explicitly state words related to the user’s interest and implicitly denote user intent. It is precisely because the individual enters a specific keyword that Google is able to sell targeted ads… at great profit and benefit to advertisers and searchers alike.

The query entered in the Search box gives Google a implicit statement of intent. That intention is the gold Google resells to advertisers. If Google didn’t let users drive that intention, if they looked more like a content site or “Internet portal”, they’d have a lot less intention to monetize.

If we can extend that control, if we can make search even more user-driven, if we can enable richer, more explicit, more user-driven expressions of Search intent, I believe we can create even more value for everyone involved: search companies, advertisers, searchers, even non-paying websites showing up in “organic” results.

What does it mean to have User Driven Search?

At SwitchBook, we’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what User Driven Search might mean. I like starting the conversation with a simple example: what would it mean if I could take my search history from one search provider to another? This “dataportability” example is just an initial notion of how Search might become more user driven.

So, what do you think of when you hear (or read) “User Driven Search”?

I’ll be leading a session on this topic at the VRM Workshop next week. I hope you can join us.

This material is based, in part, upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0740861. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

[Update 5/3/2009: "user-driven Search" to "User Driven Search"

Is VRM really different from social CRM ?

Yes, although exactly how depends on how you define social CRM. Based on my understanding, I would suggest that VRM is first and foremost about providing value for the user with any vendor, as opposed to using social networking tools with a particular vendor. VRM is vendor agnostic and silo-adverse. The goal is to catalyze the development of tools for individuals through protocols and standards that let them work with any vendor seamlessly, without loss of functionality or services.

Does VRM work with a CRM ?

Sure. A CRM is a company-centric system. Every company should pay attention to its customers and CRM is currently the best-of-class thinking on the enterprise-side for how to do that. Different VRM services act on behalf of the individual, yet still require connecting to enterprise systems. For things to be seamless, VRM services should marry into CRM services for fulfillment.

Can VRM be implemented in all kinds of business?

Yes. Any business can support VRM services and be compliant with general VRM principles. Ultimately, it will be as easy for a small company to be VRM compliant as it is for a small company to run a blog or a wiki today. That takes some level of technical sophistication, but it is within grasp of any company that wants to invest a small amount of effort using freely available open source tools. Eventually, VRM will be available in the same way.

What’s needed for VRM to work ?

We need to work through electronic marketplace issues from customers’ perspectives, with attention to the full power of relationships, finding consistent ways to create new value through the network. For the Standards Committee, that means a public conversation starting with users and requirements. Once that is vetted in an open source manner, we can explore particular implementations. We believe that with a well defined, high quality requirements specification, service providers will emerge to deliver those services.

As customers are looking for lower prices, don’t you think that Personal RFPs are gonna cost more for customers (because they are personalized offers) ?

Two things here. First, I don’t think customers are just looking for lower prices. They are looking for better value.

http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2008/03/07/pricing-markets-and-demand-vrm-style/

One of my favorite examples of this is Shopatron’s business where they sell everything at 100% manufacturer suggested retail price, no discounts, no rebates:

http://blog.joeandrieu.com/2007/01/19/shopatron-redefines-vendor-relationships/

Second, the personal RFP is designed to eliminate transaction costs in the marketplace. Currently, product and vendor discovery is slow, expensive, and uncertain. That means buyers waste time and vendors waste advertising and lead generation dollars seeking the right match between needs and solutions. Any time transaction costs are reduced, you have an opportunity for better prices.

At the same time, Vendors will be discovering ways to provide more value to customers and the net result could easily be that customers will end up paying more for enhanced services or products. Ideally, this will mean that commodity products continue to drop in price while value-added customizations are welcomed by buyers and voluntarily paid for at a premium over the commodities.

What do you expect from VRM?

I expect it will take longer and be more work than any of us would prefer. However, I think that the concepts behind VRM, and hopefully our work developing standards and catalyzing working solutions, will enable a fundamental shift in the marketplace. As Doc Searls has said more than once, the industrial revolution is over: industry won. There is an incredibly powerful legacy of using computers and networks to help companies make more money (and create more value as they do so). Unfortunately, companies tend to think for themselves first, often to the detriment of overall economic benefit.

I see a world where every individual is engaged and empowered to get the most out of their relationships with vendors–vendors of all sizes. In that world, not only are individuals and vendors each getting and creating more value directly, the entire economy is operating at a higher efficiency as less money is spent on wasted advertising and product development and more is spent on fulfilling verified demand. This would supercharge Adam Smith’s invisible hand and provide a significant increase in aggregate global wealth for everyone. It takes the benefits of the zero-distance network and extends it efficiently into the domain of user-driven commerce.

A few gems:

What is meta about life transcends what is meta about electronics.

We have to look to solve problems for ourselves.

What really matters is our indendence, our freedom, our ability to act on our own

Enjoy!