I started this series of posts to show the increasing convergence of business and technology and this week's stories exemplify some of the emergent themes.
As apps are going mainstream and more people are using them, tech companies grapple with inspiring confidence that their personal information is safe and won't be abused. This is as much a communication as it is a product design issue.
Maybe you read about the sale value of your personal data and how you might profit for it as marketers are willing to pay good money to use it. Should you be running to claim it?
And as long as you're running, where are you going, who's coming with you, and which gear are you using?
Doing the Right Thing, Use Value, and Marketing Mojo
Welcome to the data edition of the week's notable links. The three stoies that caught my eye this week are:
+
Om Malik weighs in the recent spat of news about social apps downloading people's iPhone address books without asking and admonishes tech companies to do the right thing:
Apologies, outrage, anger and blaming Apple for not being more strict overlooks one of the most important aspects – the moral imperative. As I sit here are watching the white-hot arguments, I wonder why we aren’t talking about doing the right thing. Why do I bring this up? Today’s apps are inherently more social and thus by extension more human. The relationships on this social web are going from increasingly virtual to more real.
[...] Just because Apple doesn’t have a “permission” behavior imposed on the apps, doesn’t mean that the apps have to do it.
Getting away with something eventually catches up with a business. The discussion should shift onto industrywide practices.
+
It is Doc Searls who assists us in sorting out the difference between use value and sale value with it comes to personal data. In a recent CNN interview, when asked to explain if perceived value and what marketers are willing to pay people for data, he responded:
exactly what are marketers willing to pay to individuals directly for personal data? Without that information, we can’t say what people’s perceived value for their personal data might be. In fact, there never has been a market where people sell their personal data.
What we do know for sure is that personal data has use value. That it might also have sale value — to the persons themselves — is a new idea, and still unproven. We’re only talking about it because marketers are paying other parties for personal data.[...] does that speculative sale value exceed the actual use value for the same data? Hard to say, because the metrics are different. Most use value is not transacted, and can’t be accounted for.
Sometimes, the so-called lie is in the question - ask the right question, and now you have the basis for a more productive conversation.
+
Fortune gives us a peak behind Nike+ new marketing mojo:
Nike Digital Sport, a new division the company launched in 2010 [...] is not just about creating must-have sports gadgets. Getting so close to its consumers' data holds exceptional promise for one of the world's greatest marketers: It means it can follow them, build an online community for them, and forge a tighter relationship with them than ever before. It's part of a bigger, broader effort to shift the bulk of Nike's marketing efforts into the digital realm [...]
Nike is going where its customers are, and is interacting with them in real time. Are you?
+
As Searls says, it’s about relationship, not transactions.