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Posts Tagged ‘representation’

Customer Commons

October 19th, 2011
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Occupy Facebook comic

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Earlier this week, several of us met to talk about developing a non-hierarchical, scalable organization called Customer Commons. The working ideas/hypotheses include:

  • This is a community of individuals that buy stuff (customers),
  • it receives its funding only from customers, and
  • the organization serves the collective interests and aspirations of those customers.

You’ve likely heard of Creative Commons (offers alternative copyright choices for publication of your work), Consumer’s Union (addresses the information asymmetry between consumers and companies, but reifies the old constraints), Common Cause, and other “commona” related interests that help bridge the gap between abundance and scarcity. However, there’s a need for an organization that represents the customers.

A few rough notes from the meeting:

Process: problem definition, validate possible solutions for your market, then build. No a priori structure. Customer discovery, customer validation (confirming that they’ll pay for your solution), customer creation, company building. Joe will arrange a series of conference calls based on Four Steps of the Epiphany (45 pages) to discuss a process for building this organization. (Let me know if you’d like to join us!) This process/movement/organization will “roll out like the web” in the sense that everyone is exploring a market place/need.

Organizational aspect: Organization should be in the same vein as what we’re trying to create with VRM, not a hierarchy. What is it that is unique/needs to do that nobody else does?

Product hypothesis: what problem must we solve to adhere our mission and change the world?

  • VIP access to beta products that are VRMy
  • Support development of rights frameworks that are VRMy
  • Building moral/political/economic force
  • membership
  • legal education
  • magazine/publications
  • tools
  • seed funding for VRM tech
  • Participation in the conversation that is reframing the market
  • Develop/grow the “customer interaction protocol”

Customer hypothesis:

  • We are the 100% (eventually)
  • We are intentful

Process: idea – discussion understanding – agreement – movement – ubiquity

Three “might be viral” points: 1) is edge driven, 2) is VRMy like our projects, 3) says “emperor wears no clothes” (reflects common values).

More work will be done in the coming weeks.

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KindClicks (ads that you want)

February 18th, 2009
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A colleague pointed me to this commercial for a company called KindClicks. It’s an interesting concept: sign up and identify the kind of ads you might be interested in, they represent you (anonymously) to the advertisers who then pay for access to the people who are interested. KindClicks then offers you the ads, and shares the advertising money with you (or a charity). From their site:

The company protects and brokers consumers’ data and communications to enable more effective and efficient business marketing and sales. KindClicks also has a philanthropic agenda; the company is committed to helping nonprofits, associations, and foundations raise money by empowering their constituents to make and save money.

I haven’t signed up yet because I’m still mulling over their Terms of Service (especially the part that says we can change our terms any time without notification and you hereby agree to those changes). I can’t agree to something I don’t know or haven’t seen yet.

Coaching moment: What do you do when you need to research a purchase? If you had the opportunity to be represented by an advertising service? How important is it to ask friends for their opinions? (They are a social “recommendation engine.”) If you could design the perfect service that would deliver information about goods and/or services, the ones you’re interested in, what would it do or not do? There are a lot of developers that want to know.

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