Continued from Part 1
How to prepare for Shopping 3.0
A key element of preparing for the Semantic Web is to remember that the best Semantic Web technologies are only as good as the data they can access. If you want to enjoy the best that Semantic Web technologies have to offer be prepared to make A LOT of information about yourself available online. A great place to start is your Facebook profile. If you want to get the most from the future of Semantic Web shopping I suggest you begin by flesing out your profile as much as you possibly can. The reason I suggest you begin with Facebook in particular is because you’ve probably already got a profile there already and, whether you like or not, Facebook is already making your information available to other services via it’s API. The Facebook API grants access to the following details about any and every Facebook member (this is a very partial list):
- Location
- Gender
- Sexual preference
- Marital status
- Employment history
- Likes – books, films, music, etc.
- Fan pages the member belongs to
Despite current criticism over Facebook’s failings in regards to monetizing, the information they have is without doubt a veritable treasure trove of personal information just waiting to be commercialized. Whatever the future has in store for us in terms of Semantic Web there can be little doubt that the Facebook API will have an important part to play in it.
Hunting for bargains - a thing of the past? (image by avlxyz)
What about privacy?
I’m fully aware that those of you who are touchy about privacy are probably scandalized by my last suggestion. Right about now you’re probably thinking: “What? make stuff about me publicly available online? What are you nuts?!?”.Luckily while writing this post I ran into an excellent article titled “How much is your privacy worth?“. The article, written by Eric Harber, does an excellent job of presenting the Semantic Web consumers’ paradigm, and moreover illuminates that there’s little that’s new about it. The articles main premise is that we’ve been trading our privacy in for perks and benefits for years and therefore there can be little doubt that we’ll continue to do so in the future. Mr. Harber argues that every loyalty club we’ve ever subscribed to, every coupon we’ve ever cashed and every marketing survey we’ve ever particiapted in all stand as examples of cases where we’ve voluntarily surrendered some of our privacy for a perk offered by a marketer.
Our wish to safeguard our privacy is understandable but the simple truth is that in this data driven day and age privacy is increasingly an illusion. More and more of our daily activities are monitored, individually or in aggregate, whether we’re aware of it or not. The data collected is already being put to use in advertising whether obviously or less so. This trend will increase as the quality of data and the ability to analyze it continue to improve.
Semantic Web shopping will be Opt-in
To me there’s something very comforting about the knowledge that this process of cashing in my privacy for perks isn’t new. It means that the practices and policies that need to be developed in order to enable and regulate marketing on the Semantic Web have a solid base for reference, one that not only takes consumers’ privacy into account, but also gives it a paramount importance. There can be no doubt that the Semantic Web will usher in a new age that will change not only our understanding of what consists of “private information” but also what may be done with it. As was the case with this same dilemma in the past, ultimately legal frameworks will be created that will ensure that a consumers right to privacy is protected and that receiving marketing offers remain an opt-in experience (Anti spam legislation being a prime example).
If you’re skeptic that the legal aspect alone won’t be enough to enforce the sanctity of consumer privacy I submit to you the following argument – companies that abuse privacy will suffer such a backlash from consumers and create such splitting PR headaches for themselves that the practice will quickly become unprofitable. At worst we’ll have to deal with the Semantic Web version of Viagra spam…
Epilogue
Progress is inevitable therefore it becomes the collective responsibility of both marketers and consumers to define to what extent the trade-off between privacy and purchasing perks creates value for all the stakeholders involved. The laws of economics will eventually guarantee that imbalanced models will slowly die out leaving us with those that we not only can, but also want to, live with. After experiencing first hand how inefficient online shopping really is I personally would be happy to divulge information about myself if it would save me all the time I spent searching for that perfect stroller… ; )
