Setting the agenda: Committing to the methodology
An ownership concept
TODD ESKELSEN: The Information Valet Service entity -- however it is constituted -- will manage the playing field, and record transactions, but won't dictate which transactions occur or when or the values exchange. One possibility would be to organize the IVS entity similar to what the BlueTooth Association did. BlueTooth couldn’t make it big enough by themselves. Instead nine companies came together and agreed to share technologies and subscribe to standards for wireless communication between devices. So a challenge is to bring together the "anonymizer service" with the "information you want" and then market it as a private-label to information providers.
There's a challenge in figuring out how to craft the network so so that the range of participants can go from bloggers to Time Warner Inc., Eskelsen said. The organization has to be iterative, open, and has to be started by major players.
ELIZABETH OSDER: IAB, OPA, Bluetooth – is this a movement, a production, an association, an activism, is it Consumer Reports?
JEFF VANDERCLUTE: What are control checks on chaos? Are we willing to entertain a certain amount of chaos?
Understanding and conveying the value to stakeholders and committing to a development methodology are keys to launching the Information Valet Project, consultant Elizabeth Osder told participants in "Blueprinting the Information Valet Economy." Osder was an informal kick-off commentator on Thurs., Dec. 4, 2008, at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism.</4>
Raligning the loss of value on two sides
OSDER: (pharaphrasing) The IVP "needs a better lead paragraph." Consumers are losing personal information without compensation. Publishers are losing content without compensation. Each is profiting from the other. The IVP proposes a method for exchanging these values, to answer the consumer's inclination to say, "I'd like my piece of the pie," and the information service company's need to get paid.
What IVP should do is a literature review of all of the component parts of the proposed service, to see what already exists. There are three types of people -- the visionary entrepreneur, the builder and the product marketer. The IVP is trapped among all three. So much is already out there, it's just a matter of getting down to work to integrate and market. Is it consumer-advocacy entity, or a trade association, or a technology that gets built? Whatever it is, commit to a methodology, write a product requirement.
Start with definitions. For example, what does identity mean? Get to some specifics for working groups. With the definitions, find the products already out there that can support the system. Build the market map. What's unique on every level of the stack? Create case studies about what this connective tissue would join together. What is the ecosystem going to look like.
Two of three values we understand
OSDER: There are three values, two we understand:
- Privacy issue
- Relationship with advertisers where consumer would get paid to look at advertising
- Not talked about – why would InfoValet give us better access to content? Nobody complaints there is not enough information on the Internet.
A possible answer: InfoValet enables a wide array of access points to information and is will enable the delivery of content closer to what you are looking for. We don't wan't information cul de sacs. We need protocols for guaranteeing transparency.
- How do you derive revenue that allows you to create unique and valuable content?
- Leverage brand value of news organizations.
