11.22.2006

the value of metadata

While I think that Paul Kedrosky is on to something in his recent post on the release of the new flickr camera ratings page, I disagree with his comment:

"Give the software away, so to speak, and sell the data. Its day is coming."
I think privacy concerns over the use of user-generated data in general, and metadata in particular may cause a backlash and user revolt if you simply give away the software and sell the data. Isn't this what all the web2.0 "beta" sites do today? Give away their services for free and sell their usage data to spammers (uhhh I mean ad agencies) and seed their sites with Adsense / Adwords to generate enough revenue to keep them afloat?

How much data about users and user behavior is too much to collect? Exploit? Sell? Privacy and identity theft are the biggest concerns I have about exposing my data on the net today.

Sites like Wesabe and the trend that we are seeing here with Yahoo's use of Flickr's user-generated metadata may drive new business models, but I think that there is a fine line that most intelligent users who actually read EULAs and privacy agreements are probably going to be a bit reluctant to cross.

The cost of giving up your identity and privacy information versus the perceived benefits of doing so (e.g. the wesabe community approach) are a debate that will wage on for some time. As an example of putting a value on my personal [meta]data and identity, I recently chose to NOT fill in and print out a $3 off online coupon for the Seattle Ski Expo this past weekend in favor of NOT having to give up my identity to get a lousy $3 off the entry fee.

I like to think that my identity and [meta]data is worth more than $3.

UPDATE: Thanks to Marc @ Wesabe for the detailed commentary and clarification on Wesabe's model and Data Bill of Rights.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, bdeseattle,

I'm one of the founders of Wesabe. I absolutely agree that your identity and metadata are worth a lot more than $3. You're wrong, though, that Wesabe exists to fleece consumers' metadata and to sell that off to the highest bidder -- that's not our business model at all.

Our model is to make money when our customers save money. We do this by giving away basic services and charging a subscription model for advanced services. (This is just like Flickr, except that we don't run ads on our site because we believe ads are designed to cause you to spend money, and we want to be the site that helps you save money.)

The only data we allow anyone but you to see is the data we allow *everyone* to see, namely the aggregate data about which merchants provide the best value. We think of this like a reverse credit report -- instead of collecting data on you so that a business can assess you as a credit risk, we collect data on businesses so that you can assess them as a value risk. That data is available for free on every merchant and tag page on the Wesabe site. (Currently we require people to register for a free account to get access to this aggregate data, but we plan to open this up to unregistered users in the near future.) Also, the Wesabe site is released and is not in beta -- we don't think it would be responsible to ask you to manage your money through a 'beta' site.

I can understand why you would assume that our model is to sell off your data; that's a common model. It's just not ours. Take a look at our Data Bill of Rights, and I think you'll see that we're trying to make this a site about collecting data on merchants, not collecting data on consumers. (I've written about this topic for years -- for instance, see "Is it really My Yahoo? Or is it theirs?," which I wrote in 2001.)

I hope this helps -- please feel free to email me at marc@wesabe.com with any questions or comments on this.

Marc Hedlund, co-founder, Wesabe.

bdeseattle said...

Marc - I appreciate the detailed response, commentary, and clarification on Wesabe's model and Data Bill of Rights. I look forward to exploring my Wesabe account and contributing to the community.

--Brian