Nov
25
We Create the Rules…
November 25, 2007 |
It’s been a quiet Thanksgiving weekend in the blogosphere, but today’s discussion about setting our personal data free from the Facebooks and Netflixs of this world has stirred at least some interest. I hope it stick around until tomorrow, because I think it is a worthy cause that needs to get more traction.
Dave Winer wants an open relationship:
I want Netflix and Yahoo to give me an XML version of my movie ratings, for me to decide what to do with. I’ve been asking for this for a couple of years, I still don’t have it. This is information I created. I want to keep a copy. I want to make sure that Netflix knows about all my Yahoo ratings and vice versa. I’d like to give a copy to Facebook (assuming they agree to not disclose it) and maybe to Amazon, so they can recommend products I might want to purchase (again keeping it to themselves). I want to begin a negotiation with various vendors, where I give them something of value, and they give me back something of value.
Damn right he is. Facebook gets to know everything about you. When you were born, where you live, who you date, what you eat, etc.
But it gives you preciously little in return. And just to add oil to the fire, it now even knows what you buy (or at least it wants to know). You get back to ability to use their service, but they get a lot more value out of your data than you get from their service. And to keep milking that cow, they hold your data hostage.
Netflix knows every movie I like and dislike, but I can’t move that data to Blockbuster or amazon.
If I create the data, then it should be mine…
On the other hand, not handing over your data creates ‘user loyality’. You don’t switch to Blockbuster because you would have to rate all those hundreds of movies again. Same with social networks. It’s a shrewd business plan, but it might backfire in the long run.
Doc Searls says it is time to create a symmetrical relationship between users and vendors. Amen to that! Now we need to start explaining the benefits of that to the folks who don’t read Techmeme.
Doc also says, it is time for us to create the rules by which the vendors play. My own rule is pretty simple. No open data - no data from me.
Here is the problem I see, though: most normal users on the net don’t care. While the geeks in the audience have moved their RSS subscriptions around from service to service thanks to OPML, the rest of the world doesn’t even know what RSS is.
Most users might not have enough time and energy invested in a system to be bothered by this and the services we are talking about here are mainstream services who can live without the geeks. Unless there is a critical mass of users who complain, we might not see much movement on this front.
Some of this plays into Jason Calacanis’ post about this issue. According to Jason,
You can get away with this kind of behavior for a short period of time, but not for the long run. There are just too many folks out there like Doc, Dave Winer, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble, Steve Gillmor, and Leo Laporte out there today who will call you on it.
Again it comes back to bloggers and their influence of the marketplace… I love it.
True, but ask the millions of Facebook users if they ever heard of any of these characters Jason mentions… maybe Facebook will be relieved to see the bloggers leave… maybe, we are in need for a bit of a reality check.
Let’s not forget that celebrity gossip blogs get a lot more attention than the Gillmor Gang. Me might just realize that most users are just fine with the rules as they are today - and that’s not a good thing.
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[…] of responses making the topic end up high on the TechMeme list. Jason addresses some valid points, but Frederic, from the Last Posdcast, downsizes the rawl noting that Facebook users don’t seem to care about data portability or […]
You are so right here. My biggest concern is Facebook Beacon and its apparent disregard for its users. I keep on reading the geek bloggers and, for it or against it, they seem to think of it as a technology issue. Code, RSS feeds, etc.
The vast majority of Facebook users haven’t heard of Doc Searles, Dave Winer, or Jason Calacanis. They just want to buy a book or tickets to a movie and not have it broadcast to their friends. My post:
http://marketingconversation.com/2007/11/24/facebook-beacon-inst-in-the-users-interest-that-means-you/
All true, which is why I want to go far beyond blogging about it. I want to create easy-to-use tools that give users both independence from BigCos like Facebook, and better ways of engaging with them.
And that’s what we’re doing here at the Berkman Center with ProjectVRM: http://projectvrm.org. It’s also why I’m inviting folks to come to the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View next week.
Complaining won’t cut it. Writing code has a much better chance.
Doc, Thanks for the good work! I am glad to see the VRM project is gathering some steam.
What kind of tools are you thinking about?
I actually went and read a ton of privacy policies and terms of use statements at sites I use. Across a number of major sites, there’s a pretty wide-ranging set of policies. Results posted here: http://www.emaildashboard.com/2007/11/how-privacy-and.html
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