I Have A Dream: Where is my personal API? (Part 1)

The words bubbling in the mouths of every tech, (digital) marketing person nowadays are: API, Web 2.0, social web, social networks, etc. etc. And on, and on on it goes. And frankly I am sick of it! Why? Because with a few exceptions, nobody figured it out yet; no wonder Facebook and other social and 2.0 companies are not yet making money. At the Web 3.0 Conference & Expo a couple of months ago in Santa Clara, I wanted to provide an open forum to exploring the new business models of the future of the web. The conference was a success in my opinion, and we are now planning for the next instantiation, stronger, better, bigger, more encompassing, in New York in the Spring (date tentatively set). But as it turned out, a lot of the focus of presenting companies was (still) around advertising and targeting as moentization approach to the next web. The truth is, I really believe that's only one, and perhaps not even the most important one. Let me explain.

Certainly advertising has potential as monetization tactic of 3.0, but that's only because it's "tried and true", and it's the way we have been used to sell VC's in the Internet startups we are dreaming. What I wanted to achieve (and will do so even more strongly at the next event) is to force people to think other ways of monetizing the next Internet. Since it's all about data, we tend to reduce the conversations around using data (on the backend) to come up with smarter, more relevant ways to target and advertise to people. That may be fine, but I really am dreaming of monetizing data itself, not just the ads that may come out of processing this data.

This is a little more complicated than advertising, and perhaps closer to the business models of data services companies such as Acxiom, Experian, etc. (albeit they are doing it behind the backs of consumers). What I want is what I call the "Dan Grigorovici API". I want to own my data and I want someone to intermediate publishing my own personal API (a personal Mashery if you will, or maybe GoDaddy can add a premium service like that - here, I am giving away ideas for free). With this, I then want to allow only certain services (other my friends' APIs, maybe Walmart's API only when they have a sale for an item I wanted for so long, but only if it's less than $20, etc. etc.), and I want to control it. In other words, I am sick of what i call "the car dealer marketing" (you know what I mean), and I want me to do the dealing. Of course, this may become a little complicated when I have a day job, kids, and other things to take care of, but then (or for consumers who don't feel like being so active), another company/provider can do it all for me  on my behalf. For this type of service, I am willing to share my most private data. Why? Well let's put it this way: instead of wasting my data in millions of places that I have no clue about, I'd rather share with one central hub (who needs my permission to share/sell it to an Acxiom or such), and if/when something goes wrong, I don't need to dig through tons of channels to trace back where my data has moved from a network to another; I can just go to this one provider and scream at one, not at many (most of which are invisible to me).

A few days ago I was talking to a friend of mine, a developer, sharing the same idea and even though we have the technology available to implement this now, the biggest barriers are more on the business side (as usual, actually):

1. Users (with a few exceptions) are unaware of the value of their own data. They have no clue what invaluable an asset this is;

2. Even though we are well on the way to decoupling data from the technologies/environments that helps create them, for the most part, they are still pretty stuck to each other (including Facebook, mind you).

3. (the scariest of them all) It seems like a sisyphean work to change an entire way of doing business (from our pretty standard advertising, no matter how "relevant", to this one I am talking about). I firmly believe that we, as consumers, should start a silent revolution, maybe beginning as the "no TV Day", with a "no data trail day" - a day every year where consumers refuse to give away data to all service providers we are constantly transacting with.

How does this relate to monetization and new business models? It does, because if I am in control of my own API, the balance of power changes from the "car dealer economy" to me and my trusted intermediaries. And then not only I can charge for sharing my data, but I can even pay for these type of value-added services. And in this vision, I probably won't need a smidgeon of ad banners at all, because what's the purpose? This is inherently data-monetizing.

I am really obsessed with this dream I have (and there are a few startups I know, including my own project, plus Project VRM) that have been slowly working on something like this. I will post more in the next days about this, but would like to hear your dreams and what you think about this.

My final point is: no matter how many agencies, advertisers (GM opening a Saturn owners social network, and other crap like that), technopundits, and other sad guys keep mumbling "social web", 2.0, blah blah blah simply because it's fashionable, we are STILL monetizing not data, but pages (hence this is why Facebook is still not making money). I am pretty sure platform companies such as Facebook (and pretty positively Google) know the value of their assets is not in pages they own, but in data users generate on their pages. But I believe the reason why their CPM is so low and are not making money and they're promising a way to monetize the social web in a different way is not because they're slow or stupid. It is simply because it's very hard to turn an entire macro-level business on its head (it's the network effect, stupid, so they're waiting for the first startup to be minimally succesful with this, then they will eat it alive and scale it large), and also because the entire advertiser-agency community it stuck on stupid (especially media planning folks, I gotta say).

So, let's start the silent "no data for free day" revolution and until we get there, here's some food for thought: The Personal Platform, by Doc Searls. This is what I am talking about. But let's rush a little, I want to see the fruits of my dream in my own lifetime. Where's my Dan Grigorovici API?