What Will Bend Social Media?

We hear and read about "shifts" created by technology and examples of the influence on markets propagate daily.

Marketers jump on these shift vying for our attention aimed at ultimately "tricking us into a transaction". The irony of this behavior is that technology will eventually turn the trick onto the markets. That will happen when we, the consumers, gain more control over how we interact with the markets.

Advertising In Reverse?

Doc Searls writes: Here in the VRM development community we’ve been talking (and in some cases working) for several years on the Personal RFP. Technically an RFP is a “buyer-initiated procurement protocol” for businesses doing business with businesses: B2B as they say. With VRM the buyer is an individual. Hence, Personal RFP. Not a great label, but one that businesses understand.

Every retailer and intermediary should be interested because the promise of the Net for buyers is not an infinite variety of closed silos, but a truly open marketplace where any buyer can do business with any seller — and on the buyer’s terms and not just the seller’s.

Like everything else we will come to depend on utterly while remaining absent in the present, VRM is thoroughly disruptive idea. It’s always smart to get ahead of the curve by getting behind what will bend it.

Doc's writings help me bend my mind around what can be rather than what is. What is represents existing thinking and behavior. What can be represents how technology will "bend" both thinking and behavior because intentions will change based on innovation fueled by new knowledge.

Innovation Bends Intentions

Intentions are threaded in conversations. Intentions motivate behavior and crowds form around conversations that have an affinity to interest. Today the marketplace looks at all this interest as a "forum" to insert advertisements aimed at catching transactions. It is an old method and is in conflict with the intentions of the "marketplace of conversations.

The landscape of social technology is evolving. The evolutions demonstrates people's intents and the data clearly shows that the "peoples" intent is not relevant to ads. Rather the intent demonstrates a "shift" in consumer behavior as it relates to learning, relating and subsequently conversing around an affinity of interest.

People's interest in products and services will remain relevant. Finding said products and services is no longer relevant to traditional advertising and marketing methods. What is becoming relevant is buyers doing business with sellers but on buyers terms. The terms are changing to findability, utility, reference and time sensitivity. Terms are like rules and what was once the rules of the market will become the rules of a different market. The different market is one which is continually being empowered by the buyer rather than the seller.

When Rules Change, Markets Have To Change

Doc's says it well "the promise of the Net for buyers is not an infinite variety of closed silos, but a truly open marketplace where any buyer can do business with any seller — and on the buyer’s terms and not just the seller’s." Buyers are getting smarter, more connected and influenced by other buyers. Technology will continue to advance and Doc's vision of VRM will become a reality sooner than later. Sooner when leaders of current markets recognize the power of becoming leaders of tomorrows marketplace.

Tomorrow is framed by what can't be done today but what should be done tomorrow. Doc sees what should be done and we'll see what leaders will help him bend the rules so it can be done.