Stuart Oliver: Technology COO / Operations Director, Interim Programme Manager. Entrepreneur

I’ve been thinking a lot about how many believe that their millions will be made in marketing. For those that I’ve spoke with who’ve said this, I don’t believe them but wish them buona fortuna.

I think that, in order for to make money from marketing, the success of marketing in general needs to improve by orders of magnitude. Forget traditional logic that goes along the lines of;

1. Send out X (spam) emails.

2. 5% of X read them

3. 2% of X click a link to view a product

4. 0.01 of X buy something

I think there is a very simple solution that could be summarised by saying it needs to be more targeted.

Many of us will say that we don’t like marketing, that we don’t like see advertisements. I would say that most of us don’t mean this rather we mean that we don’t like most marketing. I would also say that the reason we don’t like most marketing is either because it’s inappropriate or ill timed.

So, what if we could address the appropriateness and the timeliness? What if data could be used from social networks? What if the deliver could be to mobiles? What if I controlled the delivery….?

Social networks are as common today as bacon and eggs. It would appear that many believe that a social network for your business, your product, your neighbourhood, whatever it is, is the answer to all your woes. Really?

What is interesting to me is how to actually make money from social networks. Putting aside the high profile big boys like MySpace and Facebook, what will happen to the others? One thought I’ve had is that they might end up being worthless. I get here on the basis that the value of a network, any network, is in the data of the membership. Given that few, if any, of us are a member of a single social network it means that our data is shared across at least two. Therefore, if one of these has value does it mean that the other is worthless? Not necessarily but it’s an interesting thought.

I am certain that value is not gained simply through numbers. That is to day, the number of members, the number of blogs, the number of clubs. All of these bring me to ask “so what?”.

I think that many fail to see how easy it can be to build communities of knowledge, groups of expertise etc from networks. Many are looking for the quick win. As if this isn’t bad enough many want the quick win brought to them. Long may they be waiting.

Based on my recent readings I thought I should be a more active proponent of RFID and author some post on good uses of RFID.

So, here is the first - RFID tagged products in your supermarket.

What if your phone or pda had an RFID reader? Well, you could wave it (yes, somewhat like a wand) near a tagged product. This would receive a unique ID for the product (and probably the specific jar/packet too) that could then be cross referenced in real time. Want to look up reviews (think amazon book reviews) of the product, voila, there they are on your phone. Want to check allergy advice, voila, there it is. Maybe you want to add this to your online shopping list, hey presto, it’s done.
Sounds convenient and beneficial doesn’t it…(?)

OK, now I should give the downside so that the same criticism isn’t levelled at me that I’ve levelled at others for being grossly biased.

This tagged product could be used to track/trace/follow your movements around the store, should the store wish to do so.  This product could be explicitly linked to your credit card (and therefore you personally) or your store loyalty card (and therefore you personally) and so you may feel or decided that you are not comfortable with the data being gathered.

The flip side to all of this is that should the product be subject to a recall then it will be easy to contact you immediately and advise you accordingly.

As mentioned previously, I’ve been reading Spychips.

On the whole, unfortunately, it’s been a disappointment. Given my own high level of interest in RFID this has been an achievement for the authors!

As I proceeded through the second half of the book, the underlying that all RFID technology is evil and exploitative simply became too tedious for me. The unfortunate thing is that the authors, in the main, have many valid points to make but their constant accusatory tone means that, as the reader, you almost start to wonder if there is a personal dislike of companies connected with RFID. In fact, having read the book, I don’t doubt there is.

The main point, made in the book, is - simply put - data. Data captured on you an me. What we bought, where, when, how much we paid for it, how we paid for it etc. This can all be captured through exploiting RFID technology. After sale though, there is an interesting challenge…what happens to the RFID tag that was in the garment you bought or a pair of shoes perhaps. If the RFID tag remains and remains active then, in theory, you can be tracked with immense accuracy and without being aware. The days of the traditional P.I. could soon be over, to be replaced by virtual P.I.’s who, with the help of subscriptions with RFID readers located anywhere can trace your every move, from anywhere. It all sounds very Sci-fi and, to a degree, it is however this is all tested theory also. So fiction it may be but only for now.

As I went through the book, I folded the corners of pages where I disagreed with the authors comments and thought I’d put my own views across here. There are simply too many, c20 at the moment, and I know that any reader would simply navigate away from this blog.

Like many things in life benefits are traded off against undesirable benefits. RFID technology has plenty of each. Talk to americans about guns and you’ll hear of a plethora of benefits to owning one and using it. You may also hear of a plethora of reasons why you shouln’t own one. I think this is a fair analogy with RFID. No, it’s not lethal however the benefits and pitfalls really are at completely opposite ends of the spectrum in that the benefits are really great and the pitfalls are really not great.

So, to draw this to a close. Spychips is a good book that will make the reader aware of how RFID may be used and abused. However the reader should also bear in mind that it’s massively biased and so if you want to put the book down feeling educated and either unbiased or able to form your own opinions you will need a mental filter in place first.

I’m hoping to meet with the authors as opinions made through reading often change once introductions are made in person.

One of the fundamental barriers to widespread adoption of RFID is the side effect it has on privacy. Like too many things in life there is a trade off with demonstrable benefit…

IBM has announced the manufacturing of it’s privacy friendly RFID solution. The solutions works by having an external antenna that can be removed (easily) by, say, a consumer after purchasing an item.

So, in-store, the RFID tag can be garment specific to allow inventory tracking etc and out of store the tag should be rendered useless. Should be. As noted in this article not everyone is convinced that it will and it’s easy to understand why. Removing the antenna vastly reduces the range over which it can be used and this is not the same as preventing it being used.

I would be happy with a statement similar to “..the tag cannot be interrogated at distances greater than x centimetres”, but not everyone will be happy with this. So, can the sceptics ever be convinced? Do they actually want the tag to be destroyed once it’s original use has been satisfied?

RFID will be one of the most influential technologies over the forthcoming years and it’s easy to see one barrier to market - privacy concerns. This is unfortunate timing given the recent high profile issue of loss of personal data, privacy is high on peoples mind. If your product exploits RFID technology what will you do to address the privacy concerns of potential clients?

Reputation is the killer app for the foreseable future and so if your product doesn’t have a reputation that builds trust, you are already on a slippery slope. You might decide that, if your RFID enabled product is not privacy friendly, it may be time to define a new strategy.

I wrote the above as if writing for the future. I think that SMEs will lead the way in flexible working, not the bluechips, the corporates.

The reason why is simple. Change. Change the most common cause of big issues, budget overruns and staff churn. There are very very few good change managers out there although, a quick look through any networking site might lead you to think differently. In contrast, a quick look at any online resource for change management failures will yield many results. See where I’m going…?

So why SMEs? They are still small. They are still adaptable. They still expect to adapt. To many bluechips, a change project runs for months, sometimes years. This isn’t change, it’s evolution. These leads me to wonder if we will see an acceleration in the growth of SMEs and a “normal” rate of growth in the bluechips. Let’s see

I think that, to a certain extent, there is a power shift from employer to employee. For years, the employer has been doing the employee a favour. We pay you. We give you holiday. And you even get a canteen. However, as companies realise that their competitors are now not within 50 miles of their office, they’re not even in the same country, they also realise that they need flexibility from employees.

Recruitment websites are going to need to change. Employers don’t want full time employees anymore. They don’t want part time either. If you want to compete in the new recruitment market, your online offering will need to be able to place individuals based on their availability and the requirement of the client. Maybe it’s 2 days/pw, maybe it’s 2 hours one day and 3 the next. Whatever it is, if your recruitment business can’t offer this then you’ll soon be out of the game.

Gone will be the days where employers don’t give out mobile devices because of “security risks”. This has long been a way of saying “we don’t feel confident we can mitigate against these”. If you don’t have decent security staff then you might want to get some soon. And those guys who have prevented you using pda’s, blackberrys and laptop on the grounds of security risks should get fired.

Lastly, I suppose I should mention all things green. If your company is serious about being green then the use of remote workers will help your staff reduce their carbon footprint.

Aggregators are of great value. For me, the value is in it automatically retrieving feeds for me to read at my leisure. I don’t need to visit numerous sites to see if there is something new that may be of interest. Additionally, an aggregator can grab material for offline viewing and so allow time spent travelling to be more productive.

But…We’re now in a world where there is simply too much rubbish. For instance, Twitter is great and I only follow those that I want but still even these guys sometimes post stuff that is simply of no interest whatsoever. So, my proposed solution to this is an anti-aggregator.

Think for a moment about intelligent spam systems that “learn” what is and isn’t spam depending on what you report. We need the same functionality put into an aggregator.

This way, I still get information from those that I want to follow but when, from time to time, they post something that I’m not interested in, I don’t get to see it.

Yesterday, a new Mayor of London was elected. Step up Boris Johnson.

I write this blog as what was most interesting to me, on hearing this news, was not joy, sadness or intrigue at the election but rather a recollection of a presentation by a chap called Dan Gilbert.

The presentation was made at a SXSW conference and Prof’ Gilbert demonstrated how we are all terrible at making decisions. You wouldn’t think so, but you are. (You’ll need to watch the presentation to learn more about this). If you are happy to accept this is true then you should also question the validity of an election.
I smiled to myself when considering that the first thing that crossed my mind when hear of a new electee was that we are all terrible at making decisions.
This leads me nicely onto something else that Prof’ Gilbert presents on which is happiness (he’s also written a fantastic book on the subject, “Stumbling on happiness”). What the prof’ can show, through research results, is that those with few, or no, options are happier than those with options.

Given this, even if you were to now question the validity of the election, the results would be meaningless. The reason for this is simple, folk no longer have choice. They have a new mayor and they’re stuck with it.

So, my conclusion is this. The people of London made a concerted, by fundamentally flawed, effort to vote for the mayor of their liking. Because their decision making is floored, their voting certainly is also. Irrespective of this, they will now be happy anyway.

Funny world we live in, isn’t it.(?)

I spend a lot of time thinking about social networks and how they could be used in business. This is not how to make a business from a social network rather how to implement one in a business.

There are so many opportunities being missed due, in the main, to the risk averse nature of many organisations it’s astonishing. The tide will turn though when, within 4 years from now, we’ll see small companies, startups, exceed the revenue and customer growth of those that have been in business for decades. They’ll be left wondering what on earth happened “so fast”.

Another link between social networks and business is people, specifically potential employees.

The reason fro this is that, because of social networks, people post far more about themselves on the web than ever before. Now, having a personal presence on the web is essential (IMHO) and it’s almost concerning when someone appears to be anonymous. However, in social networks what gets posted is a lot more personal. Go onto Bebo and you’ll see that folk will happily post pictures of themselves collapsed in a heap on the pavement after a night of drinking. I’ve got no problem with that but I wonder if they will in the future…

So, the value of the web. At the moment, the value is in finding information. The search companies are making the money. I wonder if this could fundamentally change in the next 5 years. Why 5? Well this is approximately when the older users of Bebo (for example) will be leaving university with their crisp degree certificates and looking for a job. Of course, they shouldn’t be job hunting at all but, again, that’s for another blog.

I wonder if these people will think that actually, they don’t want all of this highly personal information about them on the web for potential employers to see and make judgements on. No problem they think, I’ll just go to Bebo and remove all those photos, the blog I wrote about throwing up on a bus etc etc. But hold on a moment, you’ve got a few enemies conspiring against you out there; Google’s Cache, The Internet Archive to name only two.

In this scenario, the value in the web could shift, if only a little. Many, many, people will want content removed from caches. Some search companies will offer this and some won’t. But for the individual this is time consuming work. I predict that there will be businesses whose model is, simply, to remove as much about you from the web as possible that you regret posting.

So will the value of the web be in finding current data, even recent data. Or will it be in finding data from 5+ years ago?

If you think it will be 5+ then maybe consider starting a business now that will cache personal data and then sell subscription based access to employers!

Whichever way you want to look at this, there’s a business.

PS:

The wider picture, as I’ve said many times, is that of reputation. The web is missing a decent reputation system that is site agnostic. The closest , at the moment, is Rapleaf however this could easily be fooled if you wanted to. But what if you could combine this with cached information now there’s an…..