Get Real - No More Dogs

There are powerful online trends at work sweeping away anonymity as a default position, creating many commercial opportunities for those with a light enough touch.  Firstly, there's Facebook, the web’s 800lb social gorilla.  Zuckerberg's service has given four hundred million people around the world an online identity and the norm is for users to provide 'real' information.  And it's an identity that increasingly follows you around the web, thanks to Facebook Connect.  Then there's the booming mobile web.  While PAYG allows people to disguise themselves, anyone using a contracted service instantly ties their data habits to some type of billing system, thus allowing certified transactions to occur.  Another mega-trend that will encourage people to 'get real' online is Rupert Murdoch’s decision to throw up paywalls around his online content.  Previously, people have been allowed to read the Digger’s content for free – and without flagging who they are.  However, now everyone behind the News International paywall will be attending a party where names badges are checked on the way in.  Then there’s ever faster broadband and the continuing march of Moore’s Law, making YouTube-style and webcam communication increasingly common, thus letting people see each other all too clearly.  And finally, but perhaps most powerfully, the law, in the UK at least, is swinging behind the anti-anonymity drive.  Lord Mandelson’s much-derided Digital Economy Bill may be heavy-handed in the eyes of many, but one effect it has is to batter the walls of the ISPs where, to date, anonymity has been standard fare.  All of which creates a self-reinforcing norm.  Transparency and genuine online identity becomes widespread, brushing aside the previous default so perfectly captured by Peter Steiner’s famous cartoon, ‘on the internet no one knows you’re a dog.’  This in turn creates an environment where people feel comfortable adding ever-more revealing layers of information to their online identities.  Including location, financial habits and information that, even a few years ago, would have seemed positively reckless to publish online.   As John Battelle writes, the Database of Intentions is extending beyond, ‘What I Want’, to ‘What I Buy’, ‘Who I Am’, ‘Who I Know’, ‘What I Am Doing’, ‘What’s Happening’ and ‘Where I Am’.  Of course, digital consumption habits have always linked to an IP address making it theoretically possible to identify who was snacking on what binary bytes.  However, this world was murky, with plenty of ways to conceal who was who, including floating IP addresses.  So what does this new transparent world mean for the marketing industry?   Well, increasingly, the vast oceans of data that flow around the web...

...will no longer be mysterious and faceless.  They will become valuable, real-time flows of personal information, replacing the anonymous data streams currently crunched by web analytical systems.  In retail terms, footfall will no longer be a gloomy description of unknown folk trudging past the door.   Valuable chunks of people’s real-world activity will be published online all in the context of genuine identity information, backed up by reliable checks, both social and financial in nature. 

Rupert Murdoch may have lost his classified Rivers of Gold to Craig’s List et al.  However, by throwing up the paywalls he could be tapping into rich new revenue streams.  Forget the entry fee.   A couple of quid here or there won’t add up to a hill of bean-counters.  However, the creation of a billing relationship with well-heeled ABC1s could create plenty of cash piles as paying customers are offered enticing goods beyond news.  Today, News International sells advertising space to Big Brands.  Soon they could be selling access to their readers, as the company becomes a massive CRM machine, taking verified customer information and matching it to mega-brands.  And for most people the offers will come heavily sweetened - ‘You have read ten articles from The Times, let us buy you a coffee from our partners Starbucks’. 

There has been a great deal of online discussion about the role of Free in online business.  However, the end of web anonymity is the most interesting aspect.  People are being encouraged by brands to give up personal information in exchange for free services and good deals.  To date that market dynamic has been restricted to web services, such as Gmail.  However, as the mainstream market gets real online, other categories will follow.  You may have already noticed on Facebook the ads that target your profile information, not the content you are reading.  It's a gradual but seismic shift in the exchange of value between customers and the marketing industry.  The greatest advertising cliché of all - 'We know only half of our advertising works - trouble is, we don't know which half' – will make less and less sense as online anonymity is seen as suspicious and people feel more comfortable publishing information online.

However, brands beware.  This shouldn’t be viewed an opportunity for a global spam-fest.   Companies will be expected to treat this personal data with great care.  Customers' fingers will be poised to hit the ‘Block This Brand’ button.  Ready to punish those companies who abuse their trust.   In transparent markets, customer data will be visible, but corporate fingerprints will be just as easy to trace.

Comments

[rufus sanders]

Wow James - powerful stuff.
Agree with all you've said apart from "online anonymity is seen as suspicious" -
Firms that can offer privacy will ultimately guarantee it to anyone for a fee (read well-heeled.)
Privacy , I believe will be comoditized (pay-to-fade). Ever tried asking who checked into The Priory last month? This can be done by either people surfing for you or elaborate online "selves" for specific functions. Those with the most privacy are just the most resourced in that model.
Where you are right is that current standalone privacy networks (ostensibly for the pirates dressed up as digital freedom fighters - eg TOR) will lose their status as compassionate and necessary media channels from oppresive states and simply appear as grubby kiddie networks because we dont know what they are doing.

Its the difference between secrecy and privacy I guess.

Thought provoking stuff.
Anyway, I just sell posh shoes- what do I know?!?

:)

[James Cherkoff]

Hey there Rufus! Good to hear from you...

And you make a good point about the difference between secret and private...interesting point.

You clearly know plenty about the 'well-heeled'... ;-)

All the best matey...

[Brad Bell]

So much ground covered in one small article, James...

While I don't question the trend toward increasingly valuable (to everyone) real world identities, I don't see any possible reason anonymity is going away. "On the internet, no one knows you are so many people." (Anyone who wants to rid the network of anonymity, implicitly desires tyranny.) The ideal is a mix of multiple identities based on roles (professional, personal, familial, consumer, etc) and anonymity - as well as simply having the spectrum of choices.

On the topic of 'free': despite crazy Rupert, it seems cultural belief systems have much less impact than real economic factors. Rupert seems to think there is a culture of 'free,' which can be changed with PR and leadership. Of course, that ignores the actual technological value of the global network: it radically lowers transaction costs. *That's* were the culture of free comes from. The costs of sharing information drop to the point where it resembles a glass of water in a restaurant.

Secondly - it's *digital* information. People like Rupert and Mandelson seem to struggle to see that digital media implies the end of the analog business of selling content. (In the analog world, selling content worked because copies of copies introduced noise, whereas copies of digital media are clones of the original.) Like 'free', this is often presented as a cultural belief, like a kind of negative consumer demand. This kind of thinking leads to attempts to legislate digital devices in an attempt to stop them from acting like digital devices, and legislating people into a digital panopticon, relying on dataveillance to solve problems ranging from outmoded business models to terrorism. In fact, we are being asked to buy into a technological fairy tale in order to preserve the status quo - and the costs to us are simply staggering.

It's easy to forget Rupert sold paper with news printed on it. He did not sell the news.

[James Cherkoff]

Brad, great to hear from you and some absolutely fantastic comment and insight there. Many thanks for dropping by. You paint a perfect picture of the struggles occurring on the web at the moment. However, I just feel the old guard are back in the game. The disruptors are being disrupted is an interesting phrase I read recently...