CRM is pure B2B: business to business. You’re not involved, except as a customer of CRM’s customers. It’s your relationship with a company that’s being managed—by the company. Not by you.

Last month Neil Davey of MyCustomer.com reached out from the CRM world to interview me on the subject of VRM. The result is Doc Searls: Customers will use ID data to force CRM change. The angle was data. If VRM gives customers more control over their data and how it is used, how does that help CRM? Wouldn’t customers want to share less of their data rather than more?

In fact data will be front and center as a topic at —

on Monday and Tuesday of next week at Harvard Harvard  (please come, it’s free). While most of the workshop will be organized on the open space model (participants choose the topics and break off into groups to move those topics forward), we decided to have one panel, titled Getting Personal With Data: How Users Get Control and What They Do With It. I invite local CRM folks (and everybody interested) to come and participate.

In his piece Neil sourced my new chapter (”Markets are Relationships”) in The Cluetrain Manifesto, as well as text from an interview by email. Since CRM+VRM is our topic here, I thought it would be cool to provide the long form of my answers to Neil’s questions.Here goes…

About what VRM does that CRM alone cannot…

Think of a buyer-seller relationship as vehicle that can be driven by two people: the buyer and the seller. The problem we have today is that only the seller—what in business we call the vendor—can drive. The buyer is in the passenger’s seat. She can’t drive. She can choose to spend or not to spend—or to leave the car and ride with some other vendor. But she can’t drive.

VRM gives her a way to drive.

To mix metaphors a bit, CRM systems are designed to operate what in the tech world we call “silos” or “walled gardens.” It doesn’t matter how nice a company makes its walled garden—it’s still owned and run by the company as a habitat for customers. The company makes all the rules, sets all the terms, provides all the means for everything the customer does with the company. The customer’s only choice is to take the whole deal or leave it.

Every one of CRM’s walled gardens is also different, and most treat the customer as if he or she has no other business relationships, save those to the government or to credit card companies. As a result customers have no common means for relating with multiple vendors. Thus, as CRM system adoption goes up, so do complications for customers.

Perfect example: loyalty programs. Most of these burden the customer with cards and key-ring tags—all to “increase switching costs,” to obtain a higher “share of wallet” or to impose other inconveniences. I know one guy who carries around a key ring with dozens of little tags. In my own case I recently counted fifteen different loyalty cards populating my wallet, my key chains and my glove compartment. None make me feel loyal. All increase my resentment more than “loyalty” by any measure.

Limiting customer choices amounts to wearing blinders. Companies can’t see what they won’t let themselves see. For example, they can’t see customers who choose not to shop at a store because the store only gives discounts and benefits to loyalty card holders. In my own case I buy groceries at Trader Joe’s. rather than Stop & Shop because Trader Joe’s doesn’t require that I carry a loyalty card to get a “discount” that I believe is nothing more than a regular price—while the non-card price amounts to a surcharge and a punishment for non-card-carrying customers. Whether or not this is true, it’s a legitimate perception, and an unintended negative consequence of the loyalty card system. Stop & Shop can put the world’s best data-collection behind its loyalty cards, but one thing they won’t find in that data is why I don’t buy at their store.

Being customer-driven means a company knows what customers actually want and what they actually feel. Wouldn’t it be better to know directly when a customer wants something, rather than to guess at it? Wouldn’t it be better to have whatever market intelligence the customer can provide, willingly, rather than to give the customer a limited set of choices, which may exclude the one thing that might cause a sale or make a better customer?

Friends of mine who have worked in the CRM business, and studied it over many years, tell me that in many — perhaps most — cases, customer-centricity is secondary to organization-centricity. They know of few cases where customers actually drive the company.

In the beginning CRM was about building a “single customer view,” with lots of talk about better understanding the customer’s needs, and how that should be become part of “integrated” marketing, selling and customer service. Over the years, however, this ambition was compromised by minimal data and cost-cutting requirements.

My wife, a business veteran with a long history in retailing (both at the store level and as a supplier) has observed that the trend in recent years has been to out-source support to the customer herself. “Go to our website,” the call center says. Yet typical websites are so poor at customer support that the customer is left to seek help from other customers, or from websites other than the company’s own. This is why so many customers now support each other, rather than bothering with companies’ own support sites and services.

The problem here isn’t bad CRM. It’s that there is nothing yet on the customer’s side to carry some of the relationship weight — other than what CRM systems provide. That means the whole responsibility lies with the vendor. With VRM we want to give the customer means for carrying some of the burden herself.

About VRM and its community…

The current VRM community is a convergence of several formerly separate efforts. In the UK, the Buyer Centric Commerce Forum came together in 2003. In the U.S., VRM grew out of the Internet Identity Workshops, which started in early 2005 — as a workshop discussion subject that broke off and acquired a life of its own. In my own case, VRM started as a sense of unfinished business after Chris Locke, Rick Levine, David Weinberger and I wrote The Cluetrain Manifesto in 1999. Listen to what Chris was saying (in the original manifesto posted at Cluetrain.com) with “we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.” That is the voice of the customer, energized by powers granted by the Internet but not understood by sellers there.

After Cluetrain came out, I realized that Chris’s statement wasn’t quite true, because if customer reach truly did exceed vendor grasp, loyalty cards would be pointless. Customers would have native means for expressing their own wants, needs, terms of engagement and loyalties. Thus I came to realize that relationship was the next frontier. Something had to be done to liberate both sellers and buyers from the belief that a free market is “your choice of captor.”

We didn’t call it VRM, however, until Mike Vizard suggested it during a Gillmor Gang podcast in October 2006. Before that we had called it CoRM (for Company Relationship Management) and other names. As a new fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, I needed a project. So I titled mine ProjectVRM, and the rest is history.

On how customers control personal data and its exposure…

The short answer is that customers will disclose data on an as-needed basis, within the context of a secure and genuine relationship, and not a coerced one where the vendor does all the asking.

The longer answer is that this requires a new system on the customer’s part and a modified one on the vendor’s part. That’s how VRM + CRM will work together.

Both systems need to recognize that the individual, and not the organization, should be the point of integration for his or her own data, the point of origination for sharing that data, and the authority about what gets done with that data.

The ’single customer view’ is naturally that of the customer, not the company. If a working relationship is in place, the customer will share required information when the right time comes — and do it, when need be, for many relationships at once, and in consistent, standardized ways. For example, the customer can issue a trusted change of address just once for many companies, rather than many times and many ways for many companies. In the absence of a customer-driven data-sharing system, we have companies constantly running after the customer for updates and becoming increasingly invasive of privacy over time (Phorm being just one familiar example.)

VRM enables personal data management by the individual, in ways that work for the individual and which can also enable selective disclosure to companies. There are various ways of achieving that, many of which are being actively worked on at present. The plumbing part is easy. Processes and business models are harder, but those are being worked on too.

The challenge lies in developing a more granular view of what data is shared, by whom, how, where and why. For CRM today that equates to WHO, bought WHAT, WHERE, WHEN and HOW it was offered to them. These are all data that can be derived from a system if it is built well enough. These data can then be used to make good guesswork about WHY customers bought products, and then make educated guesses about what customers will buy next.

A well designed VRM system will eliminate much of the the guesswork that CRM currently involves. For example, VRM can provide customers with tools to say “Here’s what I’m in the market for,” or “Here’s my current circumstances. What have you got that is relevant?” — in ways that prevent that data from being used later against the individual, or to inform guesswork that wastes both the vendor’s and the customer’s time and money. The customer also needs to be able to assert his or her own terms of engagement, rather than being forced to accept those required by the vendor. Customer-driven terms would naturally include commitments to pay and otherwise behave honorably; but they might also include preferences (such as “send no junk mail” or “email my receipts”). They might even include expressions of willingness to pay for good service.

On the personal data side, this system will involve what we call “volunteered personal information.” In effect this is a new class of data. Right now that data lives mostly in the heads of customers, because they don’t have the tools or systems to express any of it on their own.

Companies need to be willing to engage with this new type of data. While this may seem scary — giving up control always is — in practice it is just a more highly qualified sales lead and a smoother customer interaction than the current system allows.

On how VRM will influence vendors who don’t want to give up control…

Money talks. Consider one form of VRM we call the Personal RFP. This is where the customer advertises his or her desire to buy a product or service at a given place and time. (And not just through a walled garden such as Facebook or eBay.) For example, “I need a stroller for twins in Grand Rapids in the next 5 hours.” Data with money behind it will fund all kinds of changes in data collection systems.

On other appeals to the CRM side…

A core purpose of VRM is to eliminate the guesswork that has wasted enormous sums of money and energy for marketing and sales — while also wasting the customer’s attention and time. We can save that money, energy and time by giving customers the means to control means of engagement with companies, and to do it in standard ways that work across the board.

It is not possible to see how any of this will work if you look at it only from the supply side of the marketplace — from the standpoint of the seller. You have to take off your seller’s hat and be the other self you’ve always been: a customer.

No customer wants to be “acquired,” “retained,” “managed” or “owned” by any seller. Customers want to be respected on their own terms, and not those of a company that seeks constantly to maintain the advantage in a relationship that actually isn’t.

In other words, they want a real relationship. Not something that is a relationship in name only.

The new dynamic is a green field. We’ve never had it. I believe that if we create the means for enabling good will as well as easy sales, real relationships will follow.

On how “realistic” VRM is…

How realistic was the Internet in 1985?

Look at networks in the 80s and early 90s. If you wanted email, or instant messaging, you had to join a walled garden called AOL or Compuserve or Prodigy. If you were an AOL member and wanted to send an email to a Compuserve member, you couldn’t. Just as today you can’t use a Costco loyalty card at a Best Buy.

The Internet changed all that, by providing new protocols for communication that weren’t owned by anybody, but could be used by anybody and improved by anybody.

VRM will likewise change buyer-seller relationships by providing new means for engagement that aren’t owned by anybody, but can be used by anybody and improved by anybody.

Customers are resigned to stuff they hate when they think there are no alternatives. Once the alternatives show up, they will get energized. “Invention is the mother of necessity,” Thorstein Veblen said. What we’re doing with VRM is inventing protocols for buying and selling that will mother many new market necessities. One of those will be reforming CRM so it can respond to real customer demand, along with much better data than was ever before possible.

About where data lives, and how…

Some VRM folks (e.g. Mydex.org) are working on “Personal Data Stores” that can be replicated with trusted “fourth parties“. Some are working on ways of representing personal data (e.g. Azigo.com, Kynetx.com). Some are working on ways of consolidating loyalty data on the customer side and reforming loyalty programs from the outside in (e.g. Scanaroo from Cerado.com). All the many digital identity systems and communities have VRM components and constituents (e.g. Kantara.org, IdentityCommons.org, InformationCard.net, OpenID.org, XDI.org). Some are working on simple customer-held means for organizing one’s own data and relationships (e.g. TheMineProject.org). Some are working on means for logging one’s own media usage, and providing means for putting the pricing gun in customer hands (e.g. ProjectVRM and its friends in various media businesses). Some are working on customer-driven terms of service (e.g. ProjectVRM and friends at Harvard Law School and elsewhere). Some are working on patient control of their own health care data and relationships with health care providers (too many efforts to name, but Google and Microsoft are on this list). Some are working on user driven search, outside the walled gardens of Google and Bing (Switchbook.com). I am probably insulting many by ending the list there, but that should be enough.

About ProjectVRM.org…

ProjectVRM is a research and development project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. The project was created in 2006, and has focused mostly on development over the following three years. This next year we will be doing much more research as well.

I am a fellow at the center, and I run the project. The vast majority of the development work is going on among members of the VRM community. For them ProjectVRM serves as a central clubhouse, with workshops several times per year, a mailing list, a wiki and other supportive services. The idea isn’t to create a central VRM body, but rather to focus disparate VRM efforts on common goals.

I want to say before closing that we do not mean to give CRM a hard time. The problem CRM has had from the start is that it carries the full burden of systematizing relationships with customers. All VRM does is give customers means for carrying their end of the relationship. We won’t succeed unless it’s VRM + CRM, rather than VRM vs. CRM. If VRM succeeds, it will improve CRM enormously.

What RedBeacon offers is a form of what in the VRM community we call a personal RFP. As the company’s site says, RedBeacon provides a way to …

• 1
  Request a local service
• 2
  Compare prices
  from qualified providers
• 3
  Schedule the job online

(Whoa. I didn’t know Wordpress would let you copy and paste images and text together like that. Nice. An old dog learns a new trick.)

As it says here, you can request a service, review qualified buyers, select a provider, and schedule the job, all at the RedBeacon site.

Is that VRM? In a number of ways, yes. RedBeacon to me looks like a fourth party service, such as those outlined in VRM and the Four Party System.

I would like to see how it fits as what Joe Andrieu outlines as a user-driven service. What do the rest of ya’ll think?

Let’s face it. Mike Arrington’s problem with the iPhone, Om Malik’s problem with AT&T, the FCC’s problem with Apple + AT&T together, my own problems with Cox, Dish Network and Sprint, David Pogue’s problem with the whole freaking cell phone industry … all of these are a great big WAAAH! in the wilderness of industrial oblivity to what customers want. We’re in the graveyard of what Umair Haque calls the zombieconomy. We’re living in Night of the Living Dead and complaining that the zombies want to eat us alive.

What they really want is to strap us down while they bleed us for small change—tiny amounts of ARPU. They do this, for example, by forcing us to sit through “The … number … you … have … dialed … eight … zero … five … seven …” until a small ka-ching happens somewhere deep in their billing system, so you get bled whether or not you’ve left (or received) a message. David Pogue:

Is 15 seconds here and there that big a deal? Well, Verizon has 70 million customers. If each customer leaves one message and checks voicemail once a day, Verizon rakes in — are you sitting down? — $850 million a year. That’s right: $850 million, just from making us sit through those 15-second airtime-eating instructions.

It was JP Rangaswami (disclosure: I consult JP and his company, BT) who first pointed out to me that the primary competence of phone companies isn’t technical. It’s financial. They’re billing machines. That’s their core competency. And it was r0ml who pointed out, way back when he was with AT&T Wireless (before it became Cingular, and then the AT&T we all know and hate today), that phone companies arrived at the holy grail of micropayments decades ago. They don’t charge small amounts, but they know how to add them up, and round piles of microminutes into billions of dollars.

A better movie metaphor is The Matrix. We’re all wet cell batteries inside giant phone company billing systems. The machines took over a long time ago, and they’re still running the world.

Not that acting like machines does them much good in the long run. Umair Haque:

Profit through economic harm to others results in what I’ve termed “thin value.” Thin value is an economic illusion: profit that is economically meaningless, because it leaves others worse off, or, at best, no one better off. When you have to spend an extra 30 seconds for no reason, mobile operators win — but you lose time, money, and productivity. Mobile networks’ marginal profits are simply counterbalanced by your marginal losses. That marginal profit doesn’t reflect, often, the creation of authentic, meaningful value.

He adds,

The fundamental challenge for 21st Century businesses — and economies — is learning to create thick value. We’re seeing the endgame of a global economy built to create thin value: collapse. Why? Simple: thin value is a mirage — and like all mirages, it ultimately evaporates. In the 21st Century, we’ve got to reconceive value creation.

Constructive Capitalists are disrupting their rivals by creating thicker value. Thick value is sustainable, meaningful value — and a new generation of radical innovators is wielding it like a strategic superweapon.

Rick Segal thinks Mike Arrington’s CrunchPad is one of those superweapons. Here’s what the Crunchies say will look like:

Sez Rick,

No, this probably isn’t the next Apple or Motion Computing, but here’s the secret.

Let’s assume there are just 1000 people out of all the TechCrunch people in the world that want this device.  If this device gets made and sold to 1000 happy people and the result is a manufacturing world and process which can now do these “one off” type devices, the game changes.

That’s why I want this device to get made. It begins a high profile (and positive) disruption at the point of manufacture and that can mean exciting things to you.

One way to blow up silos and walled gardens is de-verticalize industry itself. Not by making it horizontal (that’s too abstract), but by making it personal. Rick’s angle here is to go all the way to the source, and make manufacturing personal.

That’s what Rick thinks Mike & Co. are doing here. I also think the Crunchpad is compliant with what Dave says in this post here:

I’ve been through this loop many times, this is Mike’s first. The only platform that really works is a platform with no platform vendor, and that’s the Internet.

Right. The Crunchpad, as I understand it (and the Crunchies have explained it) is a Net-native device. Standards-based. Commodity parts. Full of open source stuff. The platform is the Net. The vendor is TechCrunch, but trapping users isn’t their game. They’d rather have thick value than thin.

So how do we contribute, besides paying cash for goods? By being constructive customers, rather than passive consumers. That’s what Rick is calling for here, and why we, as free and independent customers, can choose to support something that uses the Net as the platform, and is built to be user-driven.

Think about it. Is the Crunchpad crippled by any deals with a major vendor of any kind? Is it locked into any phone company’s billing and application approval systems? Is it locked into any one industry’s Business-as-Usual? No.

So who is in the best position to contribute to its continued improvement, besides the Crunchies themselves?

You. Me. Users. Customers.

We can drive this thing. Even if what Dan Frommer says is right, and Apple comes out with the world’s most beautiful pad ever, and pwns the whole category, there’s more vroom for improvement in the Crunchpad, because Apple’s device will be closed and the Crunchpad will be open. Or should be.

You listening, Mike?

It’s not about VRM at all, but it does bring up an occasional misunderstanding about VRM: that it’s about negotiating on price. It’s not. It’s about relationship; or more precisely, about relating. If price negotiation isn’t on the table, or shouldn’t (or can’t) be on the table — as would be the case at a restaurant, a hairdresser, or most retail establishments — it’s outside VRM’s scope. VRM is about enlarging the table, not turning it over.

EmanciPay does put the pricing gun in the hands of the customer, but only for goods that cost nothing and are worth more than that. Which is why our likely first deployments are with public radio.

It helps organize our understanding to divide market activities there into three categories: transaction, conversation and relationship. Of those three, the least developed in our “developed” economy is relationship. (And it’s the most developed in the less-developed world.) The most developed in our familiar settings is transaction. With VRM we are trying to create more balance between the three by concentrating on relationship, even when the relating required is minimal. We’re doing that by better equipping the buyers’ side with tools that will serve both sides.

The kind of interaction we see in that video is about as far from VRM as you’ll get.

vangeest: @dsearls: retweet @vangeest: #vrmevent: what is the relationship between the good old B2B marketplaces like Ariba and VRM?

As an idea VRM owes something to B2B, for the simple reason that B2B relationships tend to be between equals. Thus they can be rich and complex as well. B2C tend to be simplified on the B side, mostly so maximum numbers of templated Cs can be “managed”. Iain Henderson has talked about how there are thousands of variables involved in B2B VRM, while only a handful with CRM, which is B2C.

VRM essentially turns B2C into a breed of B2B — to the degree that both terms no longer apply. VRM equips individuals to express their demand in ways that B2C never allowed, and B2B never included.

But VRM is not a site, or a marketplace. That makes it different from Ariba, eBay, or online marketplaces. VRM may happen inside of those places, but VRM is not about those places.

Most importantly, VRM is not something that companies give to customers. It’s something customers bring to companies.

zantinghbozic: #vrmevent ichoosr: vrm is socialism 2.0 – http://mobypicture.com/?pcg0qr

This reports a provocative tease by Bart Stevens of iChoosr in his opening slide. I don’t agree with the statement, but his deeper point rings true: it involves a shift in power in the marketplace, from producers to consumers. Except I wouldn’t use the word consumers. I’ll explain that later.

For retailing, the Net changes everything. But it’s still new. It’s three seconds after the Big Bang and all we have are a few light elements, a lot of heat and no galaxies. Yet $billions are already being made in online retailing, and$billions more are being spent and saved by retailers and shoppers using the Net to advantage. And because of those $billions, and the successes of companies like Amazon and Zappos, and services like Google Checkout and Orbitz, we’re inclined to think this stuff is mature. It isn’t. It’s still embryonic and protean, compared to what it will become.

In the meantime, consider this thesis: Amazon and other excellent online retailers have improved the online shopping experience as far as a retailer can. Yes, there is always room for improvement, but there is only so much improvement you can carry out only on the sell side, even if you’re equipping buyers to do a better and better job. At a certain point the improvements need to happen on the buy side. You need better buyers, not just better sellers. You need to improve the tools available to buyers — tools that help buyers with all sellers, and not just within each seller’s walled garden or silo.

Therefore… At a certain point the problem is no longer scale but scope.

Amazon and its competitors are pushing out the envelope of sell-side scope. On the buy side we’re just getting started. The envelope is still mostly empty. The job of VRM is to start pushing out its walls, starting at close to zero.

Another way of putting it. There is only so much any retailer can do, because they are sellers and not buyers.

Still another: It doesn’t matter how big you make a walled garden if it’s still a walled garden. At a certain point you reach the Multiple Walled Garden Problem. (Shall we call it MWGP? Or SO for Silo Overload?)

If you’re carrying a pile of retailer loyalty cards, you have a silo overload problem. It may not be a huge one for you, but it’s still a problem. It’s friction, and not just for you. Loyalty cards can be a PITA for the seller as well. They require multiple pricings, slow things down at the cash register, and involve piles of often wrong and irrelevant data. But I don’t want to go into how good or bad loyalty cards are here, because they’re beside a larger point: that we need to start solving market problems from customer’s side, by improving the scope of what the customer can do in the same way with multiple vendors.

For example, take affiliate programs, or affliliate marketing. Tara has been schooling me about these things, which are a huge part of how online retailing works. Hell, I didn’t even know that when I clicked on an a Head Butler link such as this one, Jesse Kornbluth gets a kickback (or at least puts himself in a position for one) from Amazon.com. He’s not just pointing to a book. He’s part of a new retail system in which commissions or kickbacks (or whatever you want to call them) are silo’d. Amazon has one kind and other retialers have other kinds. Some have none. Whether he means to or not, Jesse discriminates against those, and does so for financial reasons.

From the sellers’ side this is all fine in the sense that it’s a free (and fee, I suppose) marketplace. Every retailer is at liberty to compete by providing the best kickback system.

But what if the customer wants, say, purchasing guidance that’s uncontaminated by bias toward one kickback system over another? What if the intermediary guides the customer to a seller that doesn’t have a kickback program, and the intermediary gets nothing from the sale while the seller gets everything? Wouldn’t it be better to have the buyer (or the intermediary, on behalf of their buyers, and for the good of the marketplace) assert a single form of commissioning that’s fair and helpful to all sellers and all intermediaries — even while respecting the kickback (or commissioning) systems that are already in place?

This is a greenfield here. Let’s think and talk about it.

Also, let’s think about what kind of research project this might make — or that the theses presented here might make — for a business school student or class (at HBS or elsewhere). Because that’s one of the things I’d like to do in the next school year, which is just getting started.

Note that these apply to management of relations with vendors by customers: the narrowest scope of VRM. The larger topic of relationship managmement (RM) is part of the discussion as well. Obviously there are other relationships — with chuches, clubs, civic organizations, government bodies and so on — where VRM tools apply, but the individual is not a customer. Do we want to broaden things by saying “individual” and “organization” rather than “customer” and “vendor”? I think we’re better off with the former than the latter, but I’m open.

1. VRM provides tools for customers to manage relationships with vendors. These tools are personal. They can also be social, but they are personal first.
2. VRM tools are are customer tools. They are driven by the customer, and not under vendor control. Nor to they work only inside any one vendor’s exclusive relationship environment.
3. VRM tools relate. This means they engage vendors’ systems (e.g. CRM) in ways that work for both sides.
4. VRM tools support transaction and conversation as well as relationship.
5. With VRM, customers are the central “points of integration” for their own data.
6. With VRM, customers control their own data. They control the data they share, and the terms on which that data is shared.
7. With VRM, customers can assert many things. Among these are requests for products or services, preferences, memberships, transaction histories and terms of service.
8. There is no limit on the variety of data and data types customers can hold — and choose to share with vendors and others on grounds that the customer controls.
9. VRM turns the customer, and productive customer-vendor relationships, into platforms for many kinds of businesses.
10. VRM is based on open standards, open APIs and open code. This will support a rising tide of activity that will lift an infinite variety of business boats, and other social goods.

It’s not a VRM post, but I like Kevin Marks’ How to be viral.

In Traditional CRM, CRM 2.0, VRM — Who Gives a !*@#?, Paul Greenberg actually has positive and important things to say about VRM, its inevitable dialog with CRM, and the challenge of something he calls The Scenario.

My6Sense is a start-up that I’m gathering from mumblings may be in the greater VRM space.

Echovar sees us entering a decade it embarrasses me to name. Insightful stuff.

Chris Heuer’s Toward a More Social Organization touches on VRM

Diane Mermigas urges marketers to revisit Cluetrain, and mentions VRM. Good take on the ‘train, too.

In The Shaping of Things to Come, JP Rangaswami sees some VRM stuff going on with Amazon.

The very short version: “VODO’s aim is to provide a revenue stream for creators of media content”.

The strategy section of the long version says this:

VODO connects would-be donors to creators in order that they can make donations through existing payment mechanisms. In the current environment it is often hard for consumers to make this connection for themselves. While some producers do request and offer infrastructure for voluntary payments, these almost always have to be made at a specific website, in a manner that may be inconvenient for the consumer. VODO’s benefits lie in distributing payments out to players and downloading software, making it as trivial as possible for donors to initiate voluntary donations when they feel most ‘connected’ to the artist: at the point of enjoyment of the media.

Seems to me that VRM is a superset of this. But I’m brand new to VODO. Anybody else have some thoughts about it?

• Everyday identity and human-centered design
• Imperatives driving human-centered identity
• Practical human-centering and VRM
• The care and feeding of online relationships

… which appeared in that order. I love the graphics too. One sample:

Another:

Great fodder for discussion at IIW this week.