Comments on: VRM – vendor relationship management

By: Data portability, privacy and personal data stores « The Equity Kicker

Data portability, privacy and personal data stores « The Equity Kicker — Fri, 23 May 2008 11:15:57 +0000

[...] service to access the data on a fine grained persmissioned basis has a lot in common with the VRM vision of how advertising might [...]

By: News Corp becoming more cautious on outlook for Myspace « The Equity Kicker

News Corp becoming more cautious on outlook for Myspace « The Equity Kicker — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:36:58 +0000

[...] of social media generally and the need for revolution in the online advertising world (e.g. via VRM or recommendations as per RunToShop a startup I met here in Finland for the first time this [...]

By: Personal data stores « The Equity Kicker

Personal data stores « The Equity Kicker — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:25:15 +0000

[...] about personal data stores recently. Three small examples: personal data stores are at the heart of VRM which I have been blogging about recently, yesterday I was learning about Y-Combinator startup [...]

By: The death of the destination site « The Equity Kicker

The death of the destination site « The Equity Kicker — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 15:13:57 +0000

[...] that brand marketing will increasingly be viewed in this way, and that direct marketing will go the VRM [...]

By: Will VRM be commercial? « The Equity Kicker

Will VRM be commercial? « The Equity Kicker — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:32:25 +0000

[...] This is an area I have been getting excited about recently, and I posted some early thoughts here (the comments are also worth a [...]

By: Iain Henderson

Iain Henderson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:28:55 +0000

Yes, that is pretty much what we have in mind – with the first steps being the set up of a co-operative/ mutual business that will be the first VRM personal data store manager; in the full knowledge that the underlying design will be made available through an open source foundation or similar.

We can discuss further this evening.

Cheers

Iain

By: Ian Delaney

Ian Delaney — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:32:52 +0000

Hi Iain – yes, exactly what you say – the former, as I perceive it. The design of the store ought to be open source, with published architecture and APIs. A bit like Bluetooth and OpenID in that respect, though hopefully not so fraught.

The applications for using that store – from both vendors’ and consumers’ perspectives and the services for creating and maintaining it are certainly ‘up-for-grabs’, as it were. A bit like the way you can grab and install wordpress for yourself or use it on a hosted service. The latter is more accessible, non-techy and quicker, the former offers more control. But it’s the same beast underneath.

For example, I can envisage a consumer-friendly subscription hosted service that allows for the creation and management of the store – the only proviso would be that the design of that store conforms to the standard, so people can work with whichever vendors and tools they want and potentially move it.

I guess this is a topic we’ll pick up on tomorrow night…

By: Iain Henderson

Iain Henderson — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:14:31 +0000

Ian, just picking up on your point about ‘must be open source, must be in a foundation’; could you be a bit more specific about which bits of ‘VRM’ you think need to be brought to life through such an entity?

is it:

- the design and extension of the personal data store architecture (which i’d agree with)?

- the running of personal data store services (which I would not agree with, as I think these should not be constrained – and will emerge in all forms from mutual to full blown private sector)?

Cheers

Iain

By: Fergus Burns

Fergus Burns — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 17:44:25 +0000

Hi Nic

Thanks for the mention

We’re working on a “feed based” approach to VRM – and Ryanair is one case study.

It will take time to get all the technical ducks in line – esp. adding structure to retailer data – but a lot of good stuff is now used by lots of vendors/sites/services – oauth, hlisting microformat, atom publishing protocol – and good old RSS for data portability.

The challenge is to provide simple data capture on consumer side – and ecommerce widgets is one good enabler…

back to work – but its great to see folks getting engaged with VRM – its the way forward for eCommerce/online advertising

best Regards
Fergus

By: Ian Delaney

Ian Delaney — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:05:54 +0000

At the risk of speaking out of turn, since I don’t represent the movement/organisation, ProjectVRM is concentrated around developing a spec for the personal data store and the publication of that. That’s the core of the project, practically, I sense, for a little while. Adriana calls that a ‘mine’ (pun on mines containing resources/belongs to you/maybe also explosive). Applications for using that are the second or third phase. That’s where people will make money, I guess.

The point is that this must be open source, based in a foundation (like wikipedia and linux) and customer-led, like OpenID. The apps come later and help to facilitate the relationships, and *might* be developed by companies – if they are clever. There will be a range of apps that help facilitate communication, and good ones will do well. That’s medium term, as I understand it, but of course, companies, or potential companies, being involved and aware now will help them in the long term.