Personal Data - New Rivers of Gold?

Expect more and more stories like this to appear in the press about personal data privacy.  People are pouring their life stories into social networks and feeding the search engines with information about their every move, without a second thought.  And why shouldn't they, it's all good clean fun.  However, those trails of information are extremely valuable to marketeers when taken out of the social environment and popped under the commercial spotlight.  It's possible that as people start to understand the value of data about themselves they will demand more than bars of chocolate in exchange for access to their secrets.  At the moment Google are offering free services, such as search and email, in exchange for such insights into millions of lives, which are then converted into dosh and a vast market cap through contextualised CPCs.  But are there are other deals to be done as people begin to understand that those little Twitter updates about their lives are the new rivers of gold?  Could we ever get to the point where people put their data trails up for auction to the highest commercial bidder?  It's where (I think) the VRM project is heading off to.  Data ain't sexy, but it's the future.

Comments

[Jim Bursch]

It's already in the works with MyMindshare, where people can go to buy/sell/trade mindshare, and, incidentally, VRM will be an important part of it as I blogged here:
http://blog.mymindshare.com/2007/07/vendor-relation.html

You should check out the flash animation of the grand vision of MyMindshare:
http://mymindshare.com/b/secure/disintermediationV2.php

[James Cherkoff]

Thanks for the links Jim, I'll definitely take a look.