Immersive Labs, a NY based  start up,  builds billboard technology that can target you, personally, and present relevant ads on bill boards.  Promising? Frightening? definitely intriguing.

A closer examination reveals that this is no scene from Minority Report and your iris data are not being read to target you with direct messages.

 In fact a combination of real time, location based, combined with age and gender reading from cameras in locations where the bill boards are placed, make it possible to change ads based on the age group and activity that takes place and segment age and gender based ads in real time.

This does not fall under the category of personally targeted ads as it lacks the personal context of each person that passes near the billboard. If a 30 years old woman passes by and a disposable diaper ad appears, it’s not because they know her identity, number of young children  and the fact that her credit card shows baby related shopping, but because she falls under age and gender based segmentation.

 So for the time being – fear not the retailer’s  big brother’s eye on you just yet – with ubiquitous connectivity, smart gadgets and an always on life style, the future of  personal targeting will some day  be in time and place defined real personalized ad placement on your personal mobile device once you enter a location, based on your very personal context, purchase history – the semantic web vision and internet of things that will eventually connect, combine data and screen each of us very very  personally.

A dooms day or real user centered scenario – depends on where you stand in the privacy/sharing debate.   Let’s hope that till this happens, privacy keeping and sharing mechanisms will  be as developed as the semantic context based  profiles that will allow such individually targeted ads.

Respecting people’s  data as currency and putting its management in the hands of consumers, is threatening tracking, behavioral targeting , marketing and advertising companies, who base their traditional food chains on tracking and purchasing users’ data for the online advertising industry.

Personal information enables pinpointing on personal context which in turn spells relevant, and translates to targeted offerings and ads. The interests of providers and consumers are not that contradictory. Whereas providers look at me, the consumer, and want ROI =return on their investment for targeting me with relevant offers, I am looking at ROA=return on attention, and may be open to what, in my context, interests me.

With the shifts in internet marketing, these  interests will have to evolve. We , consumers are changing and so should marketing discourse. We  are moving to pull based models , we own conversations and change loyalties by a simple click away.  Providers and advertisers are welcome to directly ask and get our cooperation and responses.

From an icentered point of view – reversing the paradigm is natural. My data, my context, are mine. I own it and I am the only one who can proactively manage my privacy and sharing. The economics of my context – contextonomics  is a currency, yet no one has the right, unsolicited,  to infiltrate my spheres, monitor my actions and patterns and hover around, manipulating my data.

A Wall street Journal article describes several start-up initiatives that start catering for user centered needs and empower active trading of personal data by users.

 There are two sides to this coin. On the one hand, companies like Myid , Intelliprotect , Abine, that block online tracking, together with privacy groups and federated identity initiatives, represent the user side privacy protection and give privacy management services to prevent companies from viewing  results of tracking data, without direct consumer consent.

On the other side, companies like Personal Inc, i-allow  pay people a commission on their consent to share their data with marketers and advertisers.

These companies are pioneering initiatives that cater directly for user centered data on her behalf.  That in itself is a significant move towards a real user centered marketing paradigm.

Treating data as currency does not end in placing individuals as partners in food chains created around them. Contextualization mechanisms are not ripe yet to allow for context based transactions that exceed observation of raw data.

Once user side contextualization will mature, it can evolve to serve as alternative currency, in the struggle over a user’s’ attention.

 In a long tail data based economy, attention bartering  can be translated to different food chains on digital content consumption platforms. E.g, select personalized commercial targeting for the same content item by incorporating a variety of aggregation and distribution channels with different value adding chains and financial reconciliation mechanisms.  It empowers new mechanism of exchange, new kinds of aggregators. A converged unified TVIP based, social media 2.0 environment allows for diversified food chains around the same content items. To name a few:

• A pay-per-view viewership of a sports match with additional prior matches of the player who scored highest or the winning team for different bundling with targeted ads and related commercial offerings for different price options.
• A choice of a pay per view movie, leading to additional movie offerings with the same actors/director, combined with all sorts of monitory or context + ad or merchandising bundling.
• Aggregators and providers will have banks of advertising, ads will be pulled and the advertiser rewarded for each ad sent in a pull model to a viewer.
• Users can allow companies use their profiles or data for market research, targeting and get rewarded directly as part of the food chain created around them by content offerings, digital coupons, merit points…..

Scott Adams envisions Futureme, a future plans based personal network that sees my intended plans and wishes as currency.

 Right now, you can’t get there from here.

How much is my privacy worth?  my data? 

My data have a predictive value for providers and advertisers.

Once they know what I was interested in, they should know what to offer me next.

To me it spells relevance = attention enhancement

To them it spells personalization – matching offering with customer need= offering enhancement.

They are willing to pay to know my relevance scale. Of my past activities. So they can assess future potential.

Who owns the process?

To date, we, users, may own the conversation of what we want next, but providers own the data manipulation process.

Of our data!

We, users, fight for keeping our privacy. Our privacy has an economic value. What is it? How can it be quantified?

Today it is non tangible to us. We give parts of our privacy away for nothing, and most of the time, we don’t even know it. Other parts are captive in siloed sites of providers and although the data are ours, we can’t reach it, let alone use it elsewhere.

Our future interests also hold capital value. Sales potential.

Scott Adams describes a personal, future based social network, Futureme. He calls it a Facebook killer, and differentiates between them based on a time line – Facebook is about my past – Futureme – about my future. It will be  built around my future interests, where people I choose can become part of a specific social graph for a specific interaction. So can providers and advertisers.

That adds 2 dimensions to the value of my data. My personal data as displayed for a future intention that has value to providers and my social capital that has value, placing me as an anchor in a  social ecosystem built around my future interest.

I don’t know if secluded future based marketplaces are the answer, but that is definitely a clear example of how my context becomes a currency. That can be bartered with direct $ value, or with attention to targeted ads.. I call that  Contextonomics. 

You may argue with the spectrum of his call for open sharing, that’s very personal and should be calibrated by each and every one according to the event, social graph and elements involved.

This vision is of a user centered long tail, based on pull, rather than push. User controlled. Direct inclusion of the user in the food chain is in sync with the icentered mindset.

Buyer centered paradigms  will force providers to embrace an organizational shift, where putting the customer first becomes more than a marketing lip service and all the systems will have to be aligned to provide that shift to pull based marketing.

Once contextonomics allows a bartering system and user centered marketplaces are up, we, users, will then own the process, will be treated as a source of revenue and will get our rightful place in the food chain.

Turning our data into capital still requires a quantum leap.  If Dilbert sees it, eventually providers will too. Such grassroots of visions and ideas of user centered ecosystems seed the path that will eventually lead to the required paradigm shift.

This post is in response to Brian Solis’ A conversation about you, social currency and social capital.

 We, users, have always been considered capital for marketers. Times changed and the wiggle dance evolved – but we remained as elusive and  are still unable to define our capital value as working currency we can capitalize on.

Our place in the marketing mix evolved, our influence grew – but a quantum leap is still in need.  Once companies owned the dancing floor. They had us, but didn’t see us for who we were. They courted us. As we strengthened, they tiptoed around us. Now they see us, infiltrate our spheres, try to converse with us, touch us and create value that would attract us  – but they  can no longer own us or dictate.

The game changed. Its semantics, power balance and arenas – but we, users, do not have yet full control. That control demands a paradigm shift – only then we will be able to exercise the real core of our capital – the power of sharing and influencing at will, as equal partners negotiating and being rewarded in the food chains created around us.

In the traditional marketing era we were customers, users. Companies’ value increased in parallel to the market chunk they held –it was measured by the percentage of the market share owned and by how much of the customer share they could aspire for.

We, consumers, were targeted through mass media, data companies and sophisticated marketing and sales promotions all across. Marketers owned the scene through aggressive push paradigms aimed at getting to us wherever we are and accumulating numbers of customers as a basis for the company’s value. We were capital as components within the marketing mix to be targeted and translated into siloed captivity schemes that would make it very difficult to switch and abandon loyal customer benefits defined and calculated for us.

With the advent of the internet, new semantics described our customer capital value. It was still measured in mass value terms and we were still faceless. For internet based companies we became eyeballs, and the value of the company was measured by the number of eyeballs it owned.  The model story of that era was the story in 1998 when AOL   purchased Mirabilis, the Israeli developer of the ICQ IM platform, with a free offering, no business model and no income, for its main asset – its  millions of eyeballs.

As web 2.0 evolved, we were no longer faceless. Web 2.0 was our web. We had voices, opinions, conversations. Marketers no longer owned the scene. We could independently comment, recommend, warn against, express our dissatisfaction and our peers would listen and be influenced. Marketing campaigns happened in parallel, detached from our conversations or at best responding.

Marketers had to be more careful about us. They had to become more credible to earn our trust, less intrusive in their attempts to reach us and less aggressive in their means to do so. They had to heavily invest to individually learn about each of us, hire 3^rd party companies to monitor us, get to us where we went and develop product lines and personalization schemes that would suit us as individuals. That was the beginning of the long tail economy.  Once selection is unlimited, storage is no issue and retailers no longer have to carry only the items their customers demand, each individual customer and each individual product have the same value. A real 1:1 with the hegemony and focal point totally shifted to the customer.

This pull based economic model for digital entertainment offerings meant individualized relations where customers own the scene and pull from providers what suits them best. This shift brought about a new phase of economic value – the value of recommendations. Amazon’s recommendation engine lay the foundations for a passive collaborative thread that allowed me, the individual, to be influenced by the interests of people like me. My choices and interests became of value as recommendations by the mere fact that they were mine and thus made me of value to my peers. The process was still faceless. I influenced and was influenced and marketers passively rode that wagon to enhance the personal suitability of their offerings to me.  

The next phase of the web acknowledged individual identity and built on that as user capital.  The individuality of each one of us can now be established on the web as a  micro universe of one –the long tail recognizes my individuality and singularity. Once the personal targeting phase became personified, my personal capital and value to marketers, got a new twist. I had a face. Marketers wanted to know all about me, in order to target me best, wherever I am.

Relevance to what I am looking at and real time accessibility to the message  was the name of the game, targeted ads that match ads to content I interconnect with, was the method.  My capital was translated to clicks and the currency was pay per click, first in search engines and later through sites and social platforms as well. But that again spelled as  currency to marketers alone.

 Once the social web evolved, my value as an asset and my capital exceeded the individual level, to express my significance in my social graph. I could acquire a multifaceted marketing value. My capital was measured by the place I have in my social sphere.  If once I was a distinct individual in a social surrounding and had to be individually targeted, now my social dimension entered the game. My whole social graph became of value because marketers saw in me an evangelism potential as a trusted source of recommendation.

Now I already had social capital, as Brian Solis calls it. Not only am I of value for marketers as me, a potential customer, not only is my value defined as a potential influencer to my social sphere, but my expanded social landscape makes me an anchor point to be valued on its social merit – how much do I tweet, comment, converse, participate, how many friends I have, how many, who and on how much do others respond to me. I am being targeted now for completely different reasons and invested in accordingly. Up to this point, my capital is objective and quantifiable for marketers.

But the next phase of the game – the one that will transfer the power of translating this customer capital into a currency that I can trade with – has not begun yet.

Two main components are still missing. Context and control.

contextonomics – the economics of my context – My personal context is the glue to establish my value as capital. My holistic context, that reflects who I am all across.

Companies still pay a lot to try and get closer to relevance – so that their offerings surface above the general marketing noise and get my attention. They measure it in terms of ROI (return on investment) – how much will it cost them to reach me, the individual. But once they reach me, how relevant is their offering to me? Again, the closest they can get through paid targeting is to what I am looking for right now, in search and some sites and social platform. To date my context is fragmented, dispersed all across the web.  They don’t have my whole context.

And that’s my real capital.

 My holistic context is a subjective scale that places the marketing message or offer at a personal relevance value to me individually. This is what will grab my attention the most and will turn my attention into an ROA ( return on attention) for marketers’ measuring scale.

In the same token, my social relevance to the targeted offer increases or decreases my value as a source of influence to my social sphere for that specific targeting. My being an ardent traveler and social influencer place my capital at still a higher level when I allude to a travelling related offer.

To date this subjective information about me cannot be objectified or turned into a tradable currency that I, the user, can benefit from and capitalize on.  

The other missing component in my ability to utilize my social capital is the dominance of a providers’ based top down paradigm.

Contextonomics  cannot become part of the loop as long as  I don’t have control over my data and my privacy and sharing settings,  as I am in no position to turn that data into an alternative currency I can trade with.

Only when paradigms will shift  , user centered paradigms will enter the game and ecommerce will become fully pull based, the whole marketing discourse will not ignore me as a natural component in the food chain created around me and will no longer exclude me from it. Providers share their profits with targeting companies, advertising agencies – but do not approach me directly for my relevant data and do not directly trade with over my attention. How about a marketplace where I can choose between  a free downloadable movie with 3 targeted ads or 4$ fee?

Only when these two elements that combine the economics of my context can be safely objectified under my control and user centered controlled systems will ensure my data’s privacy on my behalf – we will be able to translate our capital as customers and our social capital as influencers  into workable and tradable currency and become equal partners  in the marketing mix.    

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How can I track down old information about me that floats out there in the digital Ether? Whether I’m just  privacy sensitive and don’t want scraps of data around me dispersed all over without my knowing or control, wish to minimize places I registered to but did not deactivate, hate to think that companies out there manipulate my data, feel abused by the goldmine of my data that makes marketers and advertisers happy but leaves me out of the food chains, or wish to make old hunchbacks  that can be dug by search engines,  fade away – I can now have a personal privacy cleaner at my disposal.

A  US privacy company, Abine, launched DeleteMe - a “delete button for the Internet.”   It  tracks down, on users’ behalf,  traces of personal identity and information from data, passwords, profiles, and up to search results that make people unhappy, and erases them. Price is between 10$-100$, depending on  how much one wants to remove and from where.

I haven’t tried it, so I have no way of telling how thorough and efficient it is, and maybe in the distributed internet there can’t be a seal proof guarantee.

Regardless, the initiative deserves  praise for several grounds:

To start with – it’s a universal service that exceeds the boundaries of specific siloed sites. As such it takes a harmonized approach for my digital residues from a holistic point of view and caters for my privacy needs all across.

In the current state of web related privacy policies, where as a user I’m helpless in front of opaque data gathering in sites, can’t really keep track or notice data manipulation and have to deal with a plethora of privacy policies, it’s good to have a privacy policeman directly protecting my side, working on my behalf.

The business plan based on profit generated from direct provisioning for my privacy demands, is a trust enhancer because it assures no need or ulterior motives for my data manipulation as part of the company’s business plan . I pay – I’m the customer – they cater for my needs.

 Straight. Simple. Clean.

Also the cart of services they offer answers any need from any prism a user may wish for.

The company offers data removal methods activated through both automated tools and manual data manipulation in sites, that in itself promises a more thorough and systemic cleaning.

User side services such as DeleteMe that empower me, the individual, to take active control through outsourcing expert based is yet another step towards enhancing user centered paradigms and shift control over web interaction from providers to us users – an  important step towards a transparency culture and a cleaner web ecology.

@facebook.com – Messages – my unified messaging portal- I can now talk to my friends via all real time communication means from email and up to  SMS, chat  or Messages- all through a single entry point at Facebook.

A single social integrated Inbox for all social communication is  truly a  wonderful offer.Streamlined social communications with my chosen circle of friends.  Simple, intuitive, fluid.

Spam and noise out. A white list of selected friends’  circle in.

All courtesy of Facebook.

How efficient.

How comforting.

How tempting.

How frightening!

No doubt a unified messaging system with all my friends is the future. User side harmonization is good – it’s efficient, inclusive, friendly, streaming. Takes a holistic view of me as a user and attempts to fully and intuitively accommodate me, simplify my interactions and allows me to see a comprehensive picture of my communications with a specific friend via all instant means.

What does it require of me? To reveal a lot more.

Once I register to this new system, I give Facebook my cellular number,  and access to my IM and external e-mail systems. Facebook already has a list of all my friends and can rate their value to me based on my interactions.

The good news – I don’t need to expose my shoes and bra size.

What a bear hug!

Can we afford it? Is it worth the price?

There ’s no free meal.

Beware.

Facebook wants to be there every moment of the day in all our interactions, documentation of activities, social sphere.

There’s only one question – is it really an honest to God user side service?

In a corporate driven hegemony race, can what to us users is blessed harmonization be reconciled with giants’ interests for increasing customer share and captivity through consolidation? Are we being played into the giant war between Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft…

A war over enlarging user based virtual territories.

This integrated offer will tempt me to migrate from several walled gardens  of email, IM providers  and spend more time and communications in another walled garden – Facebook.

Will we wake up one morning to find contextual text ads on the sides of our IM and chats based on what and with whom we communicated?

Can we innocently trust Zuckerberg’s soothing privacy keeping promises or, given FaceBook’s history, is it just a  lip service? Are the technologies to ensure that really there?

Where will it evolve?

How long before a cellular @facebook messaging application is up – and then we’ll be under Facebook’s hug through all media, systems and devices?

Shall we gradually stop using other mail systems, and slip into @facebooks’ comfort zone?

Will the other companies gracefully surrender or will they have to integrate Facebook’s messages to their mail systems?

And the biggest question of all – what about our privacy, ownership of our data, visibility to what we talk about and with whom?

If we feared Google’s search monitoring – that’s nothing compared to the exposure level of Facebook’s aggregated messaging platform.

Day in and day out we are prey to business social platforms. Will advertisers lurk around our walls on Facebook, hunting for indicative communications  from this single inbox?

Facebook is the natural communication platform of youngsters who intuitively share all with Facebook friends. Many of them are unaware of the distinctions, privacy implications and the data preying industry that just looks for easier ways to get it all.

Do we really want all our interactions harmonized under the auspices of a commercial entity whose business model depends on 3^rd party interests and is not directly tied to us?

In order to gain our trust Facebook will have to give us full control over our privacy settings and full visibility of their data collection, storage and usability.  

And still it is not enough.

A true user centered  web is where services are built around me, the individual, and for me, opening up the soiled gardens of providers that aim to keep me captive in a comforting bear hug.

The future lies in real user side services. A user centered approach that treats my data as my asset to keep.

When we pay a bank to keep and manage our money – its revenue streams, obligations and commitment are directly to us. Reulations to that end protect us.

Our personal data is a valuable currency and should be managed by user side data base banks that are directly just as committed to us and regulated in the same manner.

Google TV, the new Google, Sony and Intel initiative  has a potential to dramatically change the way we view TV today. Google has partnered with Sony and Intel to create a Google TV, made by Sony and powered by Intel chips that would enable a big-screen living-room web experience.

Such a set top box will become a central home portal for managing content and connectivity interactions for the whole household, through personalized handling mechanisms and will enhance new value chains, business models and consumption patterns. It will empower a TV anytime environment and will revolutionize the way TV content is consumed, to resemble web 2.0 seamless culture.

Today there are inherent gaps between passive TV viewership and interactive web navigation. Introducing Google search capabilities will make viewership intuitive when changing from a lean back TV mode into the lean forward web based interactivity.

TV viewership is passive by nature. You watch programs within channels, in a push mode, have no ability to interact with content, family or friends in real time around the viewed content items.

 More advanced set top boxes allow for limitedpull capabilities, services and VOD (view on demand) that are based on pull and active selection of what to view and when.

A web based, Google empowered TV will enable dimensions that do not exist today. It will turn the passive TV experience into a connected and shared experience and will bring connectivity to an audience that had no accessibility to the digital empowerment of the web. It will empower interactions with content in various interactive ways, web based services and new food chains around content consumption, targeted ads and up to commercialization of items and social media connectivity through the living room screen, by facilitating communicating with family members and friends in real time around a viewed program.

The digital divide is especially prominent in regard to TV, Internet and IPTV. Older generations, who are more technophobes, tend to choose the passive, coach potato like TV viewership. It’s a medium which is familiar to them, with which they feel safe. At the same time, many boomers are used to the basic Google interfaces, as search is one of the basic functions they know how to make on the web. Google should take an inclusive approach and introduce a simplified intuitive interactive TV interface that will bridge the digital divide  and provide a gateway to the connected interactive web world through simplified user friendly usability and interaction patterns.

TV viewers will change from passive spectators to active designers of their available or tailored options.  The borderline between traditional television and Internet will become obsolete, to be replaced by full media convergence. The origin of the content – TV or web based, will become immaterial; the only factor will be the relevance to viewers’ affinities and choices.

A new era of TV viewership that will integrate social media with traditional broadcast media, will empower a whole social interaction infrastructure around programs. From the simple connectivity with family and friends, sharing views and feelings  around a viewed program and up to creating ad hoc social communities of interest, encompassing the TV equivalent to location awareness – like who is watching this and that program now – from within my social sphere and up to real time communities created around a broadcasted program.

Challenges that lie ahead for achieving a flowing Google TV experience include issues such as:

• Privacy considerations
• Personalization – profiling users and monitoring their viewership to create a predictive user context and recommendation offerings
• Harmonizing offerings around users – from viewership, connectivity and up to commercialization
• DRM (digital rights management) issues – taking care of the rights of all participants in the new food chains created around pull based TV viewership 
• Audio-Visual content indexing to enhance  searchability
• Harmonized  tagging and referencing schemes  from various broadcasters
• Simple navigation and selection in the converged multimedia and TV content offerings enabled through a search engine
• Creation   of personalized accessibility in a TV Google web based portal that can be intuitively adapted to personal choices, habits and connectivity patterns.
• Harmonization of TV and web based business models and food chains to create new long tail TV based economic opportunities.
• New ad based personalization and targeting models
• Translating elements from the participatory web to be enhanced around  TV  programs, communities of interest and social web aspects.

 Personalizing TV viewership and translating it into a web like searchable experience is a very significant step in adapting   the web to larger audiences and turning the living room into a TV web based personal portal.  

Google is in a perfect position to lead the home TV revolution. Google has reorganized the distributed content on the web to make it searchable for its users, and capitalize on it as its ad based revenue making platform for the digital world.  Google sells its online advertising through a unique online model, where every Google search is analysed to determine which advertisers are best matched to get exposure through the “sponsored links” on every results page.

Imagine Google reorganizing the TV and web based multimedia distributed content to make it searchable, build new on demand, pull based food chains and activate its analysis tools to retarget the repository of TV ads, the engine at the heart of commercial TV economics. Such a disruptive TV ad based system will replace the traditional TV ad spot buying with fully automated digital marketplace systems, by best matching relevance to individual spectators, in a web like manner. The same data mining methods at the heart of content searchability, users’ data collection, ad placement and their respective matching mechanisms can create an increasing return cycle for all the food chains, business models and for all the participants in the new TV based environment, with Google’s engines at its heart.

 Let’s only hope that in the process Google will manifest the due respect, transparency and sensitivity to its users’ trust, privacy, choices and affinities.    

 Disclaimer:  I have a traditional commercial  TV background. Also, already in 2000 I was involved in the global TV anytime forum  and over the years I was involved in additional digital TV initiatives.

Barter = exchange of goods or services for other goods or services.

 The internet facilitates the creation of context based marketplaces that are economically driven and have built in reward motivations and incentives for collaboration. Digital bartering through internet based platforms is a great bartering platforms facilitator, due to the ease of use, immediate accessibility and the transactional capability of connecting people with needs to other individuals or providers, capable of satisfying these needs.

 The simplest form of digital bartering was at the hardware level – bartering idle computing resources.

Goggle is a kind of a digital barter enabler. Google reorganizes information to make it accessible through a specific individual search prism based on users’ queries. To users, it provides search results and thus empowers free access to content. In return it uses its search platform to enable advertisers accessibility to users and derives from that its ad based revenue streams.

In the era of direct conversations, link back from content, blogs and texting is also a way of bartering, although a more fluid one. Still it creates an increasing returns cycle of introductions to relevant content and all participants benefit.

Attention bartering means exchanging consumption of digital goods or services with attention – a more sophisticated form of digital bartering. Attention bartering  is a new manifestation of the long tail economy.

 Historically, in traditional media, ad related and content bartering was done mainly between corporates. Web based, context oriented bartering can be between direct individuals, through peer to peer mechanisms, or through providers or 3^rd parties.

Digital content consumption platforms empower the ability to select personalized commercial targeting for the same content item by incorporating a variety of aggregation and distribution channels with different value adding chains and financial reconciliation mechanisms.

 It empowers new mechanism of exchange, new kinds of aggregators. A converged unified TVIP based, social media 2.0 environment allows for diversified food chains around the same content items. To name a few:

• A pay-per-view viewership of a sports match with additional prior matches of the player who scored highest or the winning team for different bundling with targeted ads and related commercial offerings for diferent price options.
• A choice of a pay per view movie, leading to additional movie offerings with the same actors/director, combined with all sorts of monitory or context + ad or merchandising bundling.
• Aggregators and providers will have banks of advertising, ads will be pulled and the advertiser rewarded for each ad sent in a pull model to a viewer.
• Users can allow companies use their profiles or data for market research, targeting and get rewarded directly as part of the food chain created around them by content offerings, digital coupons, merit points…..

From the economic sense of the web service provider  this means that each transaction executed by any of its consumers, can be monetized in full and paid directly or traded, fully or partially, for alternative service. One consumer, one movie to watch for 50% discount + 3 targeted ads or one movie to watch full price – same value.

Icentricity calls for a reversal in the foundation of transactions, anchoring it on the user negotiating with a cloud of vendors of similar offering through an array of alternative paying methods rather than a vendor negotiating with a cloud of users.

From an Icentered point of view, there is a large inventory of providers and an array of bartering options from which to choose. For the user one movie + 3 targeted ads that spell 50% discount on actual payment  + attention allocation to ads that may targeted to relevant  interests and lifestyle, or one movie full price no ads (assuming same cost) is not necessarily the same. Yet, choice, value and preferences are individual.

We are constantly parts of ecosystems created around us – through direct consumption, as targeting objects, as mediators of our social graphs for marketers – but we are almost never equal participants and definately not sharing the benefits of those food chains created  around us.

In an Icentered world, a new kind of enterprise is introduced – ME.   I am an enterprise of one – an ecosystem that consumes, produces and interacts in the digital web.

What does  such an eco system look like and how does it operate?

• I am a fully equipped enterprise, with all the assets necessary to operate  in the digital world.
• All the structured and unstructured data about me are in my possession, under my control and managed by me.
• I have all sort of “machinery” to sustain me in the network –mobile phone, PDA, computer, laptop…
• I have all kinds of communication platforms to sustain my communication and business propagation – mail systems, social platforms, IM, VoIP, mobile marketing platforms.
• I am part of a large ecosystem where my friends and colleagues, family members and people I interact with  are also ecosystems of one.
• All those ecosystems are parts of a much larger ecosystem comprised of  friends, colleagues, peers, providers, distributors, communities, marketplaces, services, media, appliances,….
• Each one of us, is an Itomic ecosystem.
• Our role vs. other ecosystems may vary, we may be  providers, consumers, socializers, marketers, consultants – but  in each such case we have some prism of interest or value for other ecosystems.
• The activation of such interaction of value and interest point is not always proactively initiated by us.
• The key is context. The context is two folded – the context of the ecosystem that has just been created  ad-hoc, and my relevant context to become part of such an ecosystem.
•  This key  can be initiated by a search query on a topic both me and some people in my social sphere are interested in, hang-out  event with people in my locality, a content related interaction, a work related team activity….  In each such activity I am part of an eco system.
• I can be the center of this ad-hoc ecosystem, a close or remote node – but always   within context to this ecosystem.
• My presence in different value levels in many ecosystems, creates different value points both for me and for that ecosystem.
• A MeInside  ( to paraphrase the Inte lnside  hardware branded component) element can be in parallel  part of many eco-systems. 
• This stems from a context based economy model where my different context values in different ecosystems is based on the ability to contextify me as a whole – the principle of contexting people and not the interactions.
• Various methods can be applied- a proactive  selection of choices of context strings related to me, anautomatic feed, optional pull -  all transparent to create a soft value of credibility. 
• A context based virtual environment is created. It contains a subjective scale of me within that food chain,  for  each context based interaction.
• This relativity of subjective values constantly fluctuates, depending on its merit in various context based ecosystems.
• In order to create a context based economy there is a need in an objective measurement scale that will measure subjective proximity on an objective context scale. These  metrics will allow the creation of context based food chains, marketplaces and monetizations chemes that will become tools of the trade.
• This scale cannot be owned by any corporation – it has to be owned by the people for privacy and security reasons – various forms are possible .
• On this infrastructure, a context based monetization system can be built.  The currency does not have to be real – alternative currencies can be context based. E.g.  downloading a movie for  a cheaper rate in exchange of targeted ads. 
• The principle of exchange – Pay per context, targeted ad, advertisement supported content consumption, my functions may vary –I may get an ad directly as a consumer or  become a distributor, bridge the advertisers’ target market and send it as a reliable source to someone you think may be interested in this information.
• My social sphere that is to me a social network,  becomes a context based monetized social media distribution channel for marketers and I become a context based distribution hub of  my social sphere  for marketers and advertisers.
•  In each such instance I am an integral part of the context based eco-system created around me or where I am part of.
• I am rewarded directly by context based monetizing options.
• Top down supply chains are replaced by context based long tail ad-hoc food chains, catering for Itomic needs. Each one of us can become a supplier, distributor, marketer or consumer in these food chains in direct relation to their place in the ecosystem.
• I am rewarded in the same way other participants in that food chain are rewarded, with direct relevance to my value in that food chain.
• It creates context based marketplaces where ad-hoc seamless food chains are created and disintegrated .
• Individuals, corporates, communities wil lcreate suites of tools, apps and food chains generators to empower this context based economy.

Such a  framework can empower Contextonomics – a context based economy.

2010 was defined by trend trackers as the year of the  local. Faith Popcorn,  coined 2010 as the year of Go LoCo.

She explains what she calls local cocooning:

“as a world turned upside down drives us inward.” She explained: “Rejecting a war in Afghanistan we don’t understand, and welfare for Wall Street we can’t accept, we’ll be living like our 19th- and early-20th-century forbearers: Focusing on our neighborhoods and communities, supporting those who support us. We’re tightening up, pulling in, reducing our radius.”

This trend is part of the search for a better, simpler, cleaner life. The fear, anxiety and uncertainty of the financial crisis, recession,disillusionment from existing institutions and  growing personal frustration, made people look for new points of balance and seek to go back to basics and the familiar.

The new zeitgeist combines the craving for something that suits us personally with what fuels trust - homeliness and locality are such anchor points, where we will prefer to be surrounded by people, services and institutions we trust, that make us feel comfortable, where we can share ideas, conduct transparent conversations, trust decisions and actions or hear about what interests us now in our  locality from trusted friends.

The location based mobile niche – smart-phones and geo-location based apps are the technological platforms for real time location based context awareness. Where are you right now? What are you doing? What’s it like here? What else is there near me? Who else is here to hang out with?What fun awaits us here….It’s ubiquitous, already implemented in many devices and  creates the right leverage for combining local with local awareness based social applications to answer real time life style and social needs. It is a direct manifestation of the need to cocoon,  combined with the need to cuddle with people you know or trust physically in your location or through your social sphere.

This is where, on our turf,  our private social sphere becomes location aware social media for marketers to offer a whole new array of geo and social based offerings.

Google offers a location aware search of  Near Me Now , a very relevant searchability option and friend alert  that obviously immediately becomes a localad platform;

Twitter offers location aware apps that attach locations to tweets, offering trusted references, recommendations and social interactions.

A more sophisticated new dimension of location based games, promotional activities and fun experiences, come from companies like  Foursquare  and Gowalla  that leverage our real time whereabouts and enhance the value of places and what they offer. They build teasers, attraction incentives, social based experiences,  games  and even social media rewards in places where you hang out with your friends in your social sphere.  Jennifer Van Grove  has a  fascinating analysis of the new ways in which Foursquare is creating a new local interaction experience, inventing new business models, revenue streams, incentive programs and local advertising and marketing campaigns.

It is a  new user centered ad hoc ecosystem that exploits to the fullest my location, social connectivity, digital mobility, searchability – offering me an intuitive real time geo platform for hanging out, having fun, hearing first hand what sucks, playing location based social games through my social platform, being able to twitter about it with people who not only share with me my affinities and worldviews, but my whereabouts as well. Intricate luring webs and alternative currencies schemes that target a new eco system around me – here and now.