Business 2.0 Relationships Rule
"Business Webs are changing the rules of traditional marketing. When customers participate in a B-Web, everybody communicates — in multiple directions — and marketers can no longer control customer perceptions. The brand is no longer an image established through print and broadcast media; it functions as a measure of relationship capital. Customers gain new power. Dynamic pricing challenges fixed prices, and buyers — not just sellers — establish prices. Rather than tout products, marketers must build relationship capital via comprehensive communications strategies."

redux [04.12.00]
The Standard From Selling Goods to Commodifying Relationships
"Instead of thinking of products as fixed items with set features and a one-time sales value, companies now think of them as "platforms" for all sorts of upgrades and value-added services. In the Age of Access services and upgrades are what count. The platform is merely the vessel to which these services are added.

In a sense, the product becomes more of a cost of doing business than an item in itself. The idea is to use the platform as a beachhead, as a way of establishing a physical presence in the customer's home or place of business. That presence allows the vendor to begin an ongoing "relationship" with the customer."

redux [03.30.00]
BusinessWeek Weblining
"You may think that getting graded A, B, or C ended with graduate school. Try getting Sanwa Bank to waive its $20 fee on your bounced check. Customer reps are trained to treat everyone politely. But your luck will depend on a little letter that pops up on a screen as soon as your name is punched into a computer, or when your e-mail arrives at Sanwa's server. If that letter is a ''C,'' customer reps don't exactly hustle on your behalf. That's because machines whirring at Net-speed have lumped you--often in seconds flat--with other customers whose accounts don't make much money for the bank. But if you score an ''A,'' you're right up there with the cream: Customers who generate hefty profits get bounced-check waivers, no questions asked. And B's? They're harder calls. They actually get to negotiate with the rep before their case is decided."

"Scientific or not, high-powered computing increases the incentive for businesses to Webline customers by making human behavior appear predictable. Visa International, for example, is using neural networks to build up elaborate behavioral profiles. Over months, these systems--which emulate the learning power of the brain--track a person's behavior online and off, then match it against models of similar personality and behavior types to predict how people will act in the future. The initial incentive was to recognize and thwart fraud. Now Visa is testing the software with 12 member banks in an effort to anticipate loan defaults. ''This gives us smarter data, and with Web-based technology, we can get that to our member banks in real time,'' says Martin Izenson, a director in Visa's risk management and security group."

PRIVACY Forum Digest Cogit.com: Making DoubleClick Look Good?
"No matter how far you dig into a cesspool, it's not always easy to tell when you've reached bottom. In the case of Internet technologies that many persons consider invasive, we may be dealing with a bottomless pit of slime, a veritable cornucopia of crassness that is breathtaking to behold."

"Cogit apparently purchases masses of information about your purchasing habits, magazine subscriptions, and all sorts of other nifty data regarding your behavior. This is data that many firms consider to be their treasure-trove to exploit as they see fit. Once Cogit has managed to pick up your identity from a customer site (e.g., presumably from an online registration or online purchase), they then can link your activities on those sites to the external data sources. Once this linkage is made, the name/address/etc. information is apparently deleted.

Then, using cookies and Web bugs (the latter of which are almost impossible to disable in any normal sense for most Web users) your movements can be tracked through the related sites, controlling the content displayed based on the perceived view of what you're all about."

CNN GPS to do wonders for wireless browsing
"Previously, the GPS feed was comparatively imprecise and could be off by 100 yards or more. The unscrambled GPS signal can pinpoint whether a person wandering Times Square is about to enter the Disney Store or the Flashdancers down the block. "

""It's a bit of a marketer's wet dream," says Kyle Shannon, cofounder of Agency.com, an Internet marketing consulting firm. The idea, Shannon says, is that "someone who uses a [wireless] data network is going to respond to an ad that gives him a coupon to buy a Coke from a machine as he walks by it."

redux [05.01.00]
First Monday The COMsumer Manifesto: Empowering Communities of Consumers through the Internet
"The Internet is changing business models and empowering consumers to create new communities that combine the power to aggregate rich sources of individually personalized data in real-time activities. Large-scale data aggregators are emerging to navigate and mediate info markets. While information records are proliferating, new standards for content capture and management are appearing. Most companies continue to hope they will control their customers' information assets. However, what if this is not true or becomes impossible? What if consumers decide to band together and control their own personal information? Are you ready to freely give your customers their data records? Are you prepared to live up to the COMsumer Manifesto?

This article offers a disruptive antidote to the hierarchical, closed, supply-system, explicit, knowledge-driven, "We Know What You Want" data mine world where many customers feel powerless. This is a world well beyond 1999's "Net Worth" and 2000's "The Cluetrain Manifesto". Infomediaries are not just trustworthy agents which sit between the vendor and the customer, and markets are not just conversations. In this new world, communities sense needs, desires, and wishes for the future and create new data markets - to which organizations must respond or die! We are closing in on the "tipping point" where COMsumers take complete control of their destiny by collectively owning their personal information assets."