Digital Intention

In our omni connected era, people seem to have no qualms in telling us what they are doing and where they are. But what I’m starting to see in digital forums is people starting to tell us where they’ll be, what they are going to do, and what they intend to buy. Event organising forums, pinterest pages, wish lists, I’ll be here this Friday style tweets…. But the one that really sticks out as a massive opportunity for me is an on-line an open diary. Yes, it would require radical transparency. Yes it sounds kinda crazy and risky, but maybe fully public diaries can give back some control to the user by being removing the middle man social media marketer. A kind of open source arbitrage to fight back against the data industrial complex. Such a radical flip could give people back their power and allow self monetization.  Most users of social media are currently being sold by stealth, and sold with a large amount of guess work. Why not take it to the next level and go open source on our future locations. With an open source diary we could sell the benefits of sharing our intended activities and let traders compete for our patronage and attention.

This is a startup idea I’ve got on my radar. Would you sign up to it?

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6 thoughts on “Digital Intention

  1. Hi Steve, here are my thoughts on this.

    My first thought was “That’s a proven business model here in Norway. It works!”. There are a few famous bloggers in our part of the woods that started out with an online diary. I believe they initially intended craved attention and was happy to do this for free, but once they got past 10.000 daily readers they became attractive to advertisers.

    Today, the most famous bloggers earn several hundred thousand dollars a year. They have quit their day-job, and employed family members to run their business. Advertisers are happy to shell out for a blog entry about their latest product.

    A key element is that bloggers maintain their integrity. Their audience would immediately abandon them if they started writing great stories about shitty products. Advertisers must pay money, but have no control over how their products are being portrayed.

    Content is honest. Advertisers pay. Great products are given the attention they deserve. We win!

  2. A Foursquare is as good as open source for the guy visiting Starbucks since he isn’t paying to let others know of his location. The beneficiary is the portal which you’re calling ‘open source’, where all the advertising money is going. How does that change anything?

  3. Hi Steve,

    That too is my vision and the exact thing that my start-up Foogi is solving. It’s a simple app that you download to your phone, link your calendar to it and then open up your availabilities to the world. I would love to hear more about your ideal solution and incorporate your thoughts and ideas into our solution. I’m super glad that people like yourself want the same problem solved.

  4. It’s lucky you’ve posted this (or maybe NOT mere random co-incidence!!!) [ ;~{)]

    Because I’ve been failing to learn if you & Raul intend to be at the next FML session on Wed 30th, as you predicted during the previous general meeting. And now I can ask by blog comment without feeling uncomfortably off-topic.

    (Personally I think public revelations of current or future location must be a boon for burglars!)

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