Stop making cows. Quit being calves.

February 21, 2012 — Doc Searls

The World Wide Web that Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented in 1990 was a collection of linked documents. The Web we have today is a collection not just of documents (some of which we quaintly call pages), but of real estate we call sites. This Web is mostly a commercial one. Even if most sites aren’t [Read More →]

Posted in Companies, Demand chain, Horizontal ideas, Legal, open source, Personal Data, Problems, user-driven, VRM. 1 Comment »

Consumers are social, Customers are personal

January 14, 2012 — Doc Searls

Social media are a partial and temporary solution at best to a pair of linked problems that are essentially personal: dysfunctional customer relationship management on the vendor’s side; and minimal vendor relationship management on the customer’s side. In the absence of solutions to both problems, vendors still see customers as consumers, and that too is [Read More →]

Posted in Companies, crm, Demand chain, freedom, Legal, Personal Data, Research, social, user-driven, VRM, VRM+CRM. 10 Comments »

A bar(code) too high?

November 9, 2011 — Doc Searls

Two pieces in today’s Boston Globe worth checking out. Pun intended. First is “Some markets bagging self-checkout: Cite problems and variables with system,” by Peggy Hernandez. Second is “Scan on a mission: Stop & Shop’s new smartphone app works as a super-fast self-checkout,” by Jane Dornbusch. I’ve played quite a bit with self-check-out, and with [Read More →]

Posted in Companies, Personal Data, Research, self-tracking, Technology, Vertical ideas. 1 Comment »

Prototyping a new business model for everything

October 13, 2011 — Doc Searls

For IIW next week, Craig Burton and I have been working on a prototype demonstrating EmanciPay, using ListenLog on the Public Radio Player app from PRX.  The description at the EmanciPay link is minimal so far, but the model has a great deal of promise, because what it puts forward is a new business model for [Read More →]

Posted in EmanciPay, freedom, Initiatives, Links, ListenLog, open source, Personal Data, r-button, self-tracking, social, user-driven, Vertical ideas, VRM, Workshops. 1 Comment »

Circling Around Your Wallet

August 28, 2011 — Doc Searls

To get our heads all the way around Google+, it helps to remember Microsoft’s Hailstorm initiative from ten years ago. Think of Google+ as Hailstorm done right, or at least better. (That is, for Google.) What Microsoft wanted with Hailstorm was less “social” than personal. (“Social” in 2001 was years away from getting buzzy.)  What Google wants with [Read More →]

Posted in Demand chain, Horizontal ideas, News, Personal Data, Supply chain, user-driven. 12 Comments »

Link roundup

July 25, 2011 — Doc Searls

The hot edge of VRM right now is in South Africa, where TrustFabric (@TrustFabric, also mention ed in the prior post) is answering that country’s approach to personal privacy concerns with TrustFabric Connect. Let’s help them out. Note also that they’re helping the rest of us by making their code free (GPL v2) and therefore also open source. Also [Read More →]

Posted in Companies, freedom, Horizontal ideas, Initiatives, Personal Data, Supply chain, Transparency, VRM, VRM+CRM. Comments Off »

VRooMing along

June 29, 2011 — Doc Searls

A quick progress report on a number of VRM fronts. First, lots of action around TrustFabric.org, a VRM company in South Africa. To get some background on context, start with KYC: Know Your Customer. This good-sense imperative takes on official qualities when banking is involved, or holes are left for criminals to slip through. In [Read More →]

Posted in crm, News, Personal Data, Workshops. 2 Comments »

IIW dev job: ListenLog

April 29, 2011 — Doc Searls

Craig Burton has a nice tutorial on developing VRM applications, using ListenLog as both an example and a challenge for next week at IIW. ListenLog is the brainchild of Keith Hopper and the collaborative result of efforts by folks from NPR, PRX and other public radio institutions, as well as the Berkman Center and volunteers [Read More →]

Posted in EmanciPay, Events, Horizontal ideas, ListenLog, open source, Personal Data, personal informatics, r-button, Scenarios, self-tracking, Technology, user-driven, Vertical ideas, VRM, Workshops. Comments Off »

Personal leverage for personal data

April 28, 2011 — Doc Searls

VRM is starting to snowball. You can see it in the Twitter scroll there on the right, and in Twitter searches for #VRM. Gaining velocity lately is personal data. To look down that vector, I’ll connect several links. The first is Show Us the Data. (It’s Ours, After All), by Richard H. Thaler in the New [Read More →]

Posted in Events, freedom, Horizontal ideas, Initiatives, Personal Data, Privacy, Problems, Technology, user-driven, Vertical ideas, VRM, Workshops. 1 Comment »

The Customer Vector

March 22, 2011 — Doc Searls

In Call for startup: Easy domain editing, the first in a series of blog posts in which Dave lays out opportunities for startups, he says this: In all cases, these startups will have a business model that revolves around an old-fashioned idea that will, imho, once again become fashionable — the customer. People pay the company for [Read More →]

Posted in Companies, crm, Events, Horizontal ideas, Personal Data, social, user-driven, VRM, VRM+CRM. Comments Off »
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