Book is on Amazon

Here is the link to Amazon

http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Digital-Footprint-Two-sided-Business/dp/0955606985/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262767141&sr=8-1

Wiki experts and edits

Yesterday (Jan 6th) I spent several hours updating the Wiki entry for Digital Footprint This has been a learning lesson in wiki editorial as I ended up being blocked .

As the author of a book I cannot add it to wikki as I am biased and it is seen as advertising and promotion. However, if I create a dummy account without my name or ask a friend to do add content ( same unbiased factual material) it is accepted. The overall conclusion being that an expert in a field is not welcome to add their content to wiki as there will be a conflict of interest. The same can be added by a third party assuming they have the rights to do so.

Wiki has spend a lot of time writing guides that justify itself and it's own position.

Why I am I so interested. If digital footprint is about reputation, then getting someone else to add my content gives them the reputation, therefore why be an expert as I would be better off adding others content as my own and gain a better reputation.

The person who later changed the edit removed my reference, but left the content. However as the content is published under a creative commons attribution 2 licence, the wiki entry is now in breach as it is quoted without attribution - breaking their own rules.

Conversational, probably; thought provoking, yes !

I now have to fight the snow in HP15 rather than Wiki, one that I will win, which means sledgeing with the kids.

Tony Fish ~~~~

My New Book - My Digital Footprint

“My Digital Footprint”: My new strategy and business book on identity, privacy, trust and the direction of the Web. This book explores where next for the Web, the associated business models, who owns your data and how value and wealth will be created.

The book is free and on-line at My Digital Footprint

Some bits from the press release

London. November 2009. My Digital Footprint is about the digital data created from your interactions with electronic devices, such as mobile phones, web PCs and TVs. This data has significant value, when analysed and fed-back, to create services with colour, focus and relevancy for you as a user, as well as to brands, who want to own your whole digital life experience. Digital footprint data is valuable and is the reason why the ownership of this data class is the Web’s next battleground.

The two central ideas which underpin value in My Digital Footprint are: the real-time feedback loop and the role of the mobile device in enriching the value of the data. The ability to get data out of or off a mobile device lends itself to the unique advantage a mobile device has. The book explores how the mobile device once prevailed for the consumption of content and has evolved to enable the capturing of data on what and how we consume and with whom.

Like Marmite, some people like the idea of digital footprints and some do not, but, irrespective of personal preference, we all leave digital footprints behind us and they are about much more than just identity. Digital footprints are about where we have been, for how long, how often; with whom and the inter-relationships we formed in getting there. Digital footprints are memories and moments and not your personal identity, your passport, bank account or social security number.

In a praise of My Digital Footprint.

“Tony instinctively asks the right questions about the convergence of mobile and digital, demonstrating the emerging importance of mobile as a media platform and the rich data which it can provide for brands to leverage consumer behaviour.” Pekka Ala-Pietilä, co-founder and CEO of Blyk. President of Nokia Corporation (1999-2005)

“It was Oscar Wilde who first suggested that one's life was a work of art over which one should be able to assign rights. Now, with this suggestion, Tony is successfully applying Wilde's suggestion to the digital world. It is a vital suggestion to break what will otherwise be an interminable deadlock in the debate over privacy.” Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman Ogilvy Group

“Even if you don't intend reading this book you should still buy it just to see the direction publishing is going to go. As ever the author innovates across the entire front of paper to bits, and experiencing this new regime is worth the purchase alone. But I strongly suggest you do read and absorb the content. It is important to understand where your digital slime trail has been laid, where it will be laid in future, and the implications. This is an innovative work and a thought provoking (oh s***) read!” Peter Cochrane, Chief Technologist BT plc (1999 - 2000)

“Few have as much insight into the future of mobile as Tony Fish. He steps out of commercial paradigms and instead pursues what handsets can do not just from a technological perspective, but a social one.' Professor James Woudhuysen

Who is reading this book:
The board of directors: Irrespective of industry and executive position, this book details concepts which need to be engage with as they will increase customer value and loyalty.
Active investors: The book provides a framework for investment in digital data exploitation and provides direction for your portfolio to increase value.

The strategic analyst: Digital data and its use are critical to strategy and creating value for the next 5 years.

Marketing and social media: This book reveals how power will migrate power from agency to brands; companies will know more about their customers than their advisors.

Government: Government might want to know about the populace but we will know more about our senior political figures and be able to hold them to account without invading their privacy.
Buy this book or read online for free

Tony explains that the value is in capturing, analysing and creating value for your customer and has applied this learning with a unique and innovate route to monetise the book. You can buy it from Amazon or direct from the publisher and he will get your name and address. The complete book is available online for free at www.mydigitalfootprint.com However, if you want to read others comments on the book or leave comments and join in the debate; where the real value lies, you have to declare who you are by registering, allowing Tony to build a self interested community and create wealth.

Social Media Marketing - Book Review

Social Media Marketing

“How data analytics help to monetise the user base in telecoms, social networks media and advertising in a converged ecosystem”

Ajit Jaokar, Brian Jacobs, Alan Moore and Jouko Ahvenainen

http://socialmediamarketing.futuretext.com/

Before you read my review of this book, you need to know that I am not entirely without bias. I am the co-author with Ajit for “mobile web 2.0” and Open Gardens”. I know Alan Moore and we have spend time working up ideas. I know Jouko Ahvenainen from xtract and I am a major supporter of his company. I don’t know Brian. I am about to publish “My Digital Footprint” http://www.mydigitalfootprint.com which has a high degree of correlation to many of the topics cover in this book, so I am very sympathetic to the focus and emphasis.

This is an airplane book, easy to read and you can get through it in a round trip to Barcelona. It is not a detailed read as it is about setting up a framework and moves the discussion forward.

The books takes time to set out in the first few chapters that markets are conversations and how if you can understand who is talking to who about what, you have the basic armoury to go into battle. To understand this you need to appreciate that all those tracks, trails, clicks, messages, blogs, comments that you leave behind in a digital world are there to be collected and harvested. The more data, the more analysis the more value you should be able to create. The book looks at social networks and there is a brief look at how media agencies work and how they are reacting (or not) to change.

Page 65 starts to look at the telco market and makes the valid point that operators think they own the customer, whereas they should be thinking the could get to know the customer ( difference between monopoly and loyalty!)

In getting to know the customer there are three rules to follow:- give the customer an incentive, an open platform or ecosystem and touch points. These are then explored.

From Page 75 there is a good summary of Alan Moores Book “Communities Dominate Brands” and brings out the key point of alpha users, those who are most influential in attracting and keeping friends as part of the customer base.

On page 94 there is a move from the economics and marketing into psychology and emotional behaviour as the book moves to talk about trust and reputation.

On page 112 the book points out that due to the social network, social data and life stream mean that we now have a living profile. Once the bedrock of marketing, demographic segmentation and lifestyle categorisation; which was fixed for a period of your life and describes strata’s of the population, will now possibly become redundant. Our new profile built on digital footprints will be living real time representations. The eternal issue facing us all, however, is how do we extract the value from the data!

The later parts of the book drift into privacy and identity and the impact on people willingness to provide or give up data.

Overall well worth a flight read as it is likely to stimulate new ideas and ways of looking at your customers and the data you have (or should have) and the analysis you do do ( or should do)

Virtual Shadows – your privacy in the information society. BCS book

http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.10340

Karen Lawrence Oqvist

http://virtualshadows.wordpress.com/

“Web 2.0 and social networking sites are challenging traditional notions of privacy and security in cyberspace, at a time when surveillance and tracking in the real world have reached endemic proportions.

As the gap between virtual and reality becomes increasingly blurred by current and emerging technologies, the way we communicate and interact with one another is changing as well. But what are the implications for our privacy, and what impact will this have on our safety and security?

"Virtual Shadows" provides a fascinating glimpse into this brave new Information Society. It covers a diverse range of topics which span the 4 key areas of privacy (information, bodily, communications and territorial), where the rules of play have not yet been clearly defined, much less understood”

In truth this book is for someone who knows nothing about privacy, identity, the information society and worried about what will happen to all that data ‘society’ collects on you. As presented in the preface, this is an MSc project and unfortunately reads like one.

The few notable points include:

It assumes that the digital is a shadow of “you” and that the links and tags are a good representation, however, Karen does not bring the social graph and any representations or views of others on you.

The matrix of information (unstructured to structured) and identity (unlinked to linked) noting that the quadrant of structured and linked which includes, store cards, air miles, ID cards and RFID is the most valuable to you and others.

The book does not distinguish between digital and physical data offered or captured by you for your own benefit, data types captured by other for your benefit and data types captured by others for their benefit.

If you come from scratch this is a good read, if you have any basic level of understanding on identity or privacy this is not for you, however, do have a look at Karen’s blog http://virtualshadows.wordpress.com/

New Blogs from this point

Sorry - below this is some past blogs, copied over from an old blog board that has now been switched off.

Thanks

Mobile 2

London, November 2007

This Blog explains the power of 2.0 (two dot zero) ideals, why 'Mobile Web 2.0' centres on the unique value created by "mobile metadata" and why AMF Ventures believes that Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, understands that the ownership of mobile metadata will create more shareholder value than search!

Every CxO seeking to deliver any aspect of a convergent solution should read and debate this viewpoint as it impacts: mobile operators, handset manufactures, equipment supplies, platform supplier, application developers, middleware, venture capital, advertisers, consumer brands, media companies and agencies; the digital players.

Introduction

Web 2.0 talks of “harnessing collective intelligence”. This viewpoint presents the idea of extending this concept to the realm of mobile Digital Footprints and explores where shareholder value will be created.

At the forefront of “harnessing collective intelligence” is the mobile device, as the device is able to capture content at the “point of inspiration”. Notwithstanding any content captured directly from a device through an action of the user, there is the larger issue of Digital Footprints; this being the data captured (location and attention) just by keeping a mobile device with you. This unique mobile data and its exploitation is the essence of ‘Mobile Web 2.0’

Back in 1996, Nicholas Negroponte described the concept of Digital Footprints as a “slug trail”. We have always left Digital Footprints. Web 1.0 was about the ‘consumption web’ and clicks; in 1.0 the user left some aspects of a Digital Footprint but did not ‘write’ to the web. 2.0 gave us the ‘read/write web’ and users have emerged as both creators and consumers, we are now the audience and the author. Since we are now writing and creating content we are leaving much larger footprints, however the mobile device can provide data on where we are, how long we have spent there and who you were with; without user input! This has significant implications. However, leaving aside the privacy and security arguments, there are other implications to the leaving and more importantly harnessing of these Digital Footprints.

Web 2.0 has shown us that customers are not afraid to ‘share’ data and personal information (for instance sharing personal photos using Flickr). With Mobile Web 2.0, we add the uniqueness of mobile and leap forward because the Mobile is a personal device. Extrapolation of the trends seen on the Web (sharing personal data) to the mobile devices suggests that we are likely to witness a much richer “Digital Footprint” – and more importantly – a footprint tied to personal identity through our personal mobile device. In that sense, the idea of harnessing collective intelligence becomes dramatically significant when coupled with the ideas of mobile Digital Footprints.

Therein lays the significance of ‘Mobile Web 2.0’ and Eric Schmidt’s assertion of ‘Mobile Mobile Mobile’ as the next opportunity.

What is 2.0?

2.0 is an umbrella for practical thinking that centres on the network effect, collective intelligence, the long tail, wisdom of crowds, clans, clubs and all other manner of data exploitation ideals. In contrast to this, early web models centred on cost reduction and zero cost of customer acquisition.

Companies such as Paypal, E-bay, Amazon, Last Minute and Google have changed our traditional methods of finding information, booking holidays and selling services. Consumers see the impact of these web services - but there is a wider and

deeper impact which is not immediately evident. The impact is all pervasive i.e. it directly impacts on our children, our parents, our suppliers, our customers and our customer's referrals. It is all about the 'network effect' and the ownership of the underlying data i.e. the metadata. This is the basis of Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 brings the power of data ownership and the analysis which were previously the domain of large companies within the cost range of the SME. 2.0 technologies provide the data that the 'shop keeper' always had; which enabled him to welcome Mr. Smith and recommend something different to Mr Smith today. In that sense, moving from 1.0 to 2.0 is about the move from separation, isolation and solitude to relationship, engagement and conversation. The social engagement fostered by Web 2.0 and underpinned by data is more important than specific software, tools, methodology.

Tim O'Reilly [O'Reilly Media] described the 7 principles of Web 2.0 in an article published in October 2005. The article focused on the Web as a platform. The progressive thinking that underpins 2.0 has now extended across most sectors and business practices including:- Advertising 2.0, CRM 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, TV 2.0, Mobile and many more. Irrespective of use, 2.0 epitomises a business model that will be built on data, identity, trust and connection. Two services as shown in table 1, have typified Web 2.0 these are User Generated Content (UGC) and social networking.

	User Generated Content	Social Networking
data	the images, video and text uploaded by the creator	images, video and text shared by the users
	generation of usage metadata for analysis
identity	an identification of who the creator is, reputation.	validation of friends and connections,
trust	from the users to protect their identity and to the Brand for experience
connection	the basic requirement to enable the creator and consumer to meet

Table 1. Data, identity, trust and connection - the lynchpins of 2.0

Consumer or Creator?

Every call we make is about someone creating and someone consuming and then swapping roles. Every SMS we send is about creating, every SMS we receive is about consumption. Consumption is about one click; switch on the TV, buy on Amazon, read your message, receive a call. Creation is many clicks; dial a number, create an SMS and post a blog.

YouTube, Flickr and blogs are recognition that humans are as much creators as we are consumers. User Generated Content technologies have enabled the masses to put their creations into the public domain. We can create and this enables users to entertain themselves outside of the linear broadcast TV model; creation, in some instances, of content has become the mechanism of entertainment itself.

Whilst the Web consume model, balanced by new UGC and social networking models has seen massive growth, the mobile sector will soon over-take the Web as a platform for creation and social networking. The mobile phone has the advantage that it is always available and content can be created at the point of inspiration; this is the balance to consumption which is the ‘point of entertainment.’ As shown in figure 1

Figure 1 The balance between creation and consumption.

The mobile industry has focussed on the consumption model, which to a greater or lesser extent justified 3G business models via payment for services, applications and content. The creation side (photos and video) and taking content from the mobile to the web has emerged as a service that users exploit. Further, creators will put up with a poor user interface to engage, as it is their creation they will spend the time to master the processes.

Take up of consumption and creation within the mobile context is predicated on issues discussed at length within the mobile industry; battery life, handset constraints, UI, data pricing and access speeds. However, neither creation nor consumption are unique to mobile!

Mobile Web 2.0 – the uniqueness of mobile

The previous few paragraphs have briefly highlighted how value can be created from a mobile device as:

o the device is always available at the point of inspiration (creation) and point of entertainment (consumption);

o it provides a new media platform to complement Print, TV and Web, and;

o it is available for payment, either as a replacement or complement to plastic and cash. Which form and what limits are furiously debated by commentators who are either protecting or seeking to exploit.

Value added mobile business models were built on the idea that the user would consume and pay for content and applications. Progression of technology has allowed the Web to become mobile, bringing to the mobile service provider the possibility of advertising revenue. New and additional value could therefore be accessed utilising the same ideas that have driven Web 2.0, insomuch as the mobile can mimic the Webs' focus on clicks within the application or browser to deliver the data and information for personalisation, context and advertising revenue.

These clicks are known as our "Digital Footprint" and are a driver of value creation. Digital Footprints come from Mobile, Web and TV - the digital metadata of who we are, the true value and why the ownership of this data is the battle ground to be won and lost.

The reason AMF Ventures believes Eric Schmidt will wake up thinking "mobile, mobile, mobile" before he looks at his email, worries about the value of Double Click or improving a search algorithm is because users spend least time on TV, some on the Web but the mobile is attached personally 24/7 as shown in figure 2.

Figure 2: time and value of data

However, even if mobile based form factors will be the predominant method of Web access globally, this thinking has limited the real value and uniqueness of mobile, as it has constrained the possibility of data collection to clicks from within the mobile browser or application.

If unique "mobile metadata", data that the mobile platform can deliver which cannot be collected or obtained from another source, can be sourced; it will create value over and above other platforms such as the Web or TV. AMF Ventures has identified four unique categories of "mobile metadata" that add value to a users’ 'Digital Footprint’ and are waiting to be exploited. These are:

o Availability - as the device is with the user from dawn to dusk;

o Location - where the user is, has been, is going;

o Attention - what the user is spending the time doing, outside of an application or browser, and;

o Who - who the user is doing activities with.

The value creation opportunity comes from the ownership of these metadata categories, as the owner will be able to undertake the analysis and exploit the trends and connections. It is unlikely the user will ever know this (or care!), as long as the final service which they see will be tailored exactly to their needs.

The implications of Mobile Web 2.0

How will this vision of mobile Digital Footprints be delivered and what technology/technologies will be used? Clearly it is a whole 2.0 ecosystem question which aligns with recent announcements from Google who also believe that an alliance spanning handset manufacturers, network operators, developers and software vendors is required. Such alliances recognise that benefit individually, benefits collectively. Give this recognition that we must look at all components of the value chain at once and no individual component (or entity) in itself can deliver a service that the customer values it is a likely to be a mashup.

Hence, the device, the network and the software stack must all act in harmony to create an ecosystem which delivers a truly tailored service to the customer (in return for the Digital Footprint that the customer is willing to share with the trusted entity.

Accepting the principle that users don’t care about the underlying technology and will willingly share their Digital Footprints, the same users focus on: trust and value. User will work with the provider that they trust most as long as they perceive value from the delivery of these advanced services. The provider that understands this principle stands to leapfrog the competition through network effects and can deliver more advanced services to the user, at a lower cost with improved performance; it is likely that such a provider will reduce churn, improve margin and increase market share.

Concluding remark

Although slow in coming, Mr Negroponte’s slug trail is finally upon us with Dr Schmidt’s vision. The combination of Mobile Web 2.0, Digital Footprints and Trust is very disruptive. 2.0 thinking has a significant impact on network access choice, middleware platform functionality and device capability. The impact of this combination is just being felt and the effects will accelerate with Google’s recent announcements about ‘Android’ Google clearly recognises that the whole ecosystem must grow with all existing players benefiting (and that’s the difference between a Gphone (going it alone) and Android (an alliance).

AMF Ventures suggests BRANDS look at these developments as opportunities – rather than threats. However there are many questions which AMF Ventures can help you consider and explore:

o How can we align our company to best leverage this new world?

o What about advertising?

o How do we work with the new (aligned) device stack?

o What about open source?

o What are the implications of leveraging open source on devices?

o How can we create a true Web 2.0 system by harnessing metadata and gain competitive advantage?

o How do we engender trust?

Considering trust, this may be Google’s biggest competitive advantage. Think of this every time a ‘@gmail.com’ email arrives. The product still shows ‘Beta’ and yet millions of users are prepared to let email reside on Gmail and more importantly accept advertising in return.