The Tipping Point Has Arrived: Market Incentives for Selective Sharing in Web Communications

By Steve Holcombe (@steve_holcombe) and Clive Boulton (@iC)

A Glimmer of Market Validation for Selective Sharing

In late 2005 Pardalis deployed a multi-tenant, enterprise-class SaaS to a Texas livestock market. The web-connected service provided for the selective sharing of data assets in the U.S. beef livestock supply chain.  Promising revenues were generated from a backdrop of industry incentives being provided for sourced livestock. The industry incentives themselves were driven by the specter of mandatory livestock identification promised by the USDA in the wake of the 2003 "mad cow" case.

At the livestock market thousands of calves were processed over several sessions. Small livestock producers brought their calves into the auction for weekly sales where they were RFID tagged. An affordable fee per calf was charged to the producers which included the cost of a RFID tag. The tags identifiers were automatically captured, a seller code was entered, and affidavit information was also entered as to the country of origin (USA) of each calf. Buyers paid premium prices for the tagged calves over and above untagged calves. The buyers made money over and above the affordable fee per calf.  After each sale, and at the speed of commerce, all seller, buyer and sales information was uploaded into an information tenancy in the SaaS that was controlled by the livestock market. For the first time ever in the industry, the livestock auction selectively authorized access to this information to the buyers via their own individual tenancies in the SaaS.

That any calves were processed at all was not possible without directly addressing the fear of information sharing that was held by both the calf sellers and the livestock market. The calf sellers liked that their respective identities were selectively withheld from the calf buyers. And they liked that a commercial entity they trusted – the livestock market – could stand as a kind of trustee between them and governmental regulators in case an auctioned calf later turned out to be the next ‘mad cow’. In turn the livestock market liked the selectiveness in information sharing because it did not have to share its confidential client list in an “all or nothing” manner to potential competitors on down the supply chain. At that moment in time, the immediate future of selective sharing with the SaaS looked very bright. The selective sharing design deployed by Pardalis in its SaaS fixed data elements at a single location with authorizations controlled by the tenants. Unfortunately, the model could not be continued and scaled at that time to other livestock markets. In 2006 the USDA bowed to political realities and terminated its efforts to introduce national mandatory livestock identification.

And so, too, went the regulatory-driven industry incentives. But … hold that thought.

Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+

Google+ is now 1 year old. In conjunction with Google, researchers Sanjay Kairam, Michael J. Brzozowski, David Huffaker, and Ed H. Chi have published Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+, the first empirical study of behavior in a network designed to facilitate selective sharing:

"Online social networks have become indispensable tools for information sharing, but existing ‘all-or-nothing’ models for sharing have made it difficult for users to target information to specific parts of their networks. In this paper, we study Google+, which enables users to selectively share content with specific ‘Circles’ of people. Through a combination of log analysis with surveys and interviews, we investigate how active users organize and select audiences for shared content. We find that these users frequently engaged in selective sharing, creating circles to manage content across particular life facets, ties of varying strength, and interest-based groups. Motivations to share spanned personal and informational reasons, and users frequently weighed ‘limiting’ factors (e.g. privacy, relevance, and social norms) against the desire to reach a large audience. Our work identifies implications for the design of selective sharing mechanisms in social networks."

While selective sharing may be characterized as being available on other networks (e.g. ‘Lists’ on Facebook), Google is sending signals that making the design of selective sharing controls central to the sharing model offers a great opportunity to help users manage their self-presentations to multiple audiences in the multi-tenancies we call online social networks. Or, put more simply, selective sharing multiplies opportunities for online engagement.

For the purposes of this blog post, we adopt Google’s definition of "selective sharing" to mean providing information producers with controls for overcoming both over-sharing and fear of sharing. Furthermore, we agree with Google that that the design of tools for such selective sharing controls must allow users to balance sender and receiver needs, and to adapt these controls to different types of content. So defined, we believe that almost seven years since the Texas livestock market project, a tipping point has been reached that militates in favor of selective sharing from within supply chains and on to consumers. Now, there have been a lot of things happen over the last seven years that bring us to this point (e.g., the rise of social media, CRM in the Cloud, the explosion of mobile technologies, etc.). But the tipping point we are referencing "follows the money", as they say. We believe that the tipping point toward selective sharing is to be found in the incentives provided by affiliate networks like Google Affiliate Networks.

Google Affiliate Networks

Google Affiliate networks provide a means for affiliates to monetize websites. Here’s a recent video presentation by Google, Automating the Use of Google Affiliate Links to Monetize Your Web Site:


Presented by Ali Pasha & Shaun Cox | Published 2 July 2012 | 47m 11s

The Google Affiliate Network provides incentives for affiliates to monetize their websites based upon actual sales conversions instead of indirectly based upon the number of ad clicks. These are web sites (e.g., http://www.savings.com/) where ads are the raison d'etre of the web site. High value consumers are increasingly scouring promotional, comparison, and customer loyalty sites like savings.com for deals and generally more information about products. Compare that with websites where ads are peripheral to other content (e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/) and where ad clicks are measured using Web 2.0 identity and privacy sharing models.

In our opinion the incentives of affiliate networks have huge potential for matching up with an unmet need in the Cloud for all participants - large and small - of enterprise supply chains to selectively monetize their data assets. For example, data assets pertaining to product traceability, source, sustainability, identity, authenticity, process verification and even compliance with human rights laws, among others, are there to be monetized.

Want to avoid buying blood diamonds? Go to a website that promotes human rights and click on a diamond product link that has been approved by that site. Want to purchase only “Made in USA” products? There’s not a chamber of commerce in the U.S. that won’t want to provide a link to their members’ websites who are also affiliates of an incentive network. Etc.

Unfortunately, these data assets are commonly not shared because of the complete lack of tools for selective sharing, and the fear of sharing (or understandable apathy) engendered under “all or nothing” sharing models. As published back in 1993 by the MIT Sloan School in Why Not One Big Database? Ownership Principles for Database Design: "When it is impossible to provide an explicit contract that rewards those who create and maintain data, ‘ownership’ will be the best way to provide incentives." Data ownership matters. And selective sharing – appropriately designed for enterprises – will match data ownership up with available incentives.

Remember that thought we asked you to hold?

In our opinion the Google Affiliate Network is already providing incentives that are a sustainable, market-driven substitute for what turned out to be unsustainable, USDA-driven incentives. We presume that Google is well aware of potential synergies between Google+ and the Google Affiliate Network. We also presume that Google is well aware that "[w]hile business-critical information is often already gathered in integrated information systems, such as ERP, CRM and SCM systems, the integration of these systems itself (as well as the integration with the abundance of other information sources) is still a major challenge."

We know this is a "big idea" but in our opinion the dynamic blending of Google+ and the Google Affiliate Network could over time bring within reach a holy grail in web communications – the cracking of the data silos of enterprise class supply chains for increased sharing with consumers of what to-date has been "off limits" proprietary product information.

A glimpse of the future may be found for example in the adoption of Google+ by Cadbury UK, but the design for selective sharing of Google+ is currently far from what it needs to attract broad enterprise usage. Sharing in Circles brings to mind Eve Maler’s blog post, Venn and the Art of Data Sharing.  That’s really cool for personal sharing (or empowering consumers as is the intent of VRM) but for enterprises Google+ will need to evolve its selective sharing functionalities. Sure, data silos of commercial supply chains are holding personal identities close to their chest (e.g., CRM customer lists) but they’re also walling off product identities with every bit as much zeal, if not more. That creates a different dynamic that, again, typical Web 2.0 "all or nothing" sharing (designed, by the way, around personal identities) does not address.

It should be specially noted, however, that Eve Maler and the User-Managed Access (UMA) group at the Kantara Initiative are providing selective sharing web protocols that place "the emphasis on user visibility into and control over access by others".  And Eve in her capacity at Forrester has more recently provided a wonderful update of her earlier blog post, this one entitled A New Venn of Access Control for the API Economy.

But in our opinion before Google+, UMA or any other companies or groups working on selective sharing can have any reasonable chance of addressing "data ownership" in enterprises and their supply chains, they will need to take a careful look at incorporating fixed data elements at a single location with authorizations. It is in regard to this point that we seek to augment the current status of selective sharing. More about that line of thinking (and activities within the WikiData Project) in our earlier “tipping point” blog post, The Tipping Has Arrived: Trust and Provenance in Web Communications.

What do you think? Share your conclusions and opinions by joining us at @WholeChainCom on LinkedIn at http://tinyurl.com/WholeChainCom.

Update on Saturday, July 14, 2012 at 6:26AM by Steve Holcombe

@NZN: @Steve_Holcombe well-stated.I'd like more on undrlined element,last paragraph:"fixed data elements at a single location with authorizations"

@Steve_Holcombe: @NZN Foundational #OO design - http://tinyurl.com/76a4jtm  | Livestock project model - http://tinyurl.com/7sb9x37  | Also see #Wikidata project.

Update on Monday, July 16, 2012 at 11:07AM by Steve Holcombe

Coincidentally, see:

WebCollage Takes Ad Copy Mobile for Top Retailers
[WebCollage posts consistent ad copy on multiple retailers’ sites]
Arlene Weintraub | 7/16/12 | Xconomy.com
http://www.xconomy.com/new-york/2012/07/16/webcollage-takes-ad-copy-mobile-for-top-retailers/

http:

Consortium seeks to holistically address food recalls

The Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at Oklahoma State University (OSU BAE) is leading a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary consortium in the preparation of funding applications for two significant coordinated agricultural projects. If successful, up to $25M for 5 years will be provided for each project beginning in 2011 under the USDA’s Agriculture & Food Research Initiative for Food Safety (CFDA Number - 10.310 - AFRI). Other institutions currently involved in this growing consortium include researchers and investigators from Michigan State University, North Dakota State University, University of Arkansas, Texas Tech University and the National Center for Food Protection and Defense, a DHS Center of Excellence. For the purposes of these activities, Pardalis Inc. is embedded within OSU BAE. The applications will be filed in September, 2010. More information can be found on this site at USDA AFRI Stakeholder Solicitations.

The vision of our consortium is to

• advance technologies for the prevention, detection, and control of foodborne microbes and viruses in agricultural and food products,
• manage coordinated agricultural projects with direct input from a stakeholder advisory workgroups, and
• improve upon real-time consumer responses to food safety recalls with innovative sensor, mobile and "whole chain" information traceability technologies.

The members of our consortium have been highly influenced in their thinking by the existing data showing that many consumers do not take appropriate protective actions during a foodborne illness outbreak or food recall. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that every year at least 2000 Americans are hospitalized, and about 60 die as a direct result of E. coli infections. A recent study estimated the annual cost of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses to be $405M (in ‘03 dollars), which included $370M for premature deaths, $30M for medical care, and $5M for lost productivity. And that doesn’t include the costs of lost sales from consumers fearful of purchasing tainted meat due to the lack of real-time, reliable information.

Furthermore, 41 percent of U.S. consumers say they have never looked for any recalled product in their home. Conversely, some consumers overreact to the announcement of a foodborne illness outbreak or food recall. In response to the 2006 fresh, bagged spinach recall which followed a multistate outbreak of Escherichia coli O157: H7 infections, 18 percent of consumers said they stopped buying other bagged, fresh produce because of the spinach recall.

We envision the model implementation of a "whole chain" product traceability system (call it a "Food Recall Data Bank") to help solve the serious cry wolf problem experienced by consumers. The Food Recall Data Bank model would place a premium on privacy and loyalty. It would provide granular recall notices to pre-retailers, retailers and consumers. Each would centrally populate their accounts in the Food Recall Data Bank with GTIN or UPC product identifiers of relevance to their operations or consumption habits.

For instance, consumers could opt for retailers to automatically populate their accounts from their actual POS retail purchases. Consumers could additionally populate accounts using mobile image capturing applications (e.g., Microsoft Tag Mobile Barcode app). Supplemented by cross-reference to an Industry GTIN/GLN database, the product identifiers would be associated with company names, time stamps, location and similar metadata. Consumers would also be provided with a one-stop shop for confidentially reporting suspicious food to Recalls.gov.

This consortium is only just getting started. Other funding opportunities are being targeted. Let’s talk if you have a commercial or research interest in:

• the effects of financial damages suffered by enterprises - directly or indirectly - from food safety recalls,
• mining and analyzing the real-time data of agricultural product supply chains - including the real-time data of consumers purchasing habits, or
• the applicability of these issues to non-agricultural product supply chains.

Update on Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:32AM by Steve Holcombe

The consortium identified above is now known as the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™. The WCTC is comprised at its core of researchers and collaborators from Oklahoma State University, North Dakota State University, Michigan State University, the University of Arkansas, and Pardalis, Inc., an Oklahoma advanced technology company. Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is a trademark of Pardalis, Inc. For more information, see http://pardalis.squarespace.com/blog/2011/10/29/the-whole-chain-traceability-consortium.html

Data Identity & Supply Chains

I attended the Internet Identity Workshop #9 (IIW9) in early November at the suggestion of Silona Bonewald. She read Banking on Granular Information Ownership and we made a connection regarding her mutual data ownership approach to 'open banking'.

My attendance at IIW9 was strange and familiar. Surreal and real. It was like 'coming home' to a home I'd never seen before. A kind of deja vu.

My experiences with 'identity' have been in the registration of radically serialized data objects (i.e., data elements with GUIs) that are authored, published and distributed by supply chain participants to supply chains. The focus has been about giving product supply chains the opportunity to know more about the products by providing more permissions control over the shared data. This was first theoretically applied to supply chains for chemical products, and then actually engineered and deployed in 2003-06 to the U.S. beef livestock supply chain following the 2003 'mad cow' case. The developed system was - and is - in the form of a multi-tenant, enterprise class system (we marketed it as a 'data bank') that appears to fit well into the cross-section of the Venn diagram in the September, 2008 blog Venn and the art of data sharing by Eve Maler. That is, with one significant exception. The 'identity movement' was essentially non-existent in 2003-06 (IIW #1 was held in October, 2005) and so we did not at that time have the benefit of client-side or browser-side or smartphone-side means, functions and standards related to data identity.

In lieu of identity standards what we did was bake in our own patented business rules for shifting the capabilities of a relational SQL server toward the registration of objects; objects that would then be granularly revealed, traceable, and controllable to the nth degree of sharing among the tenants of the data bank. Then we thought we would be in a good position to tackle integration with other data silo's driving standards for universal data tags. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the coliseum - the USDA's efforts for introducing mandatory animal identification to agriculture collapsed in late 2006 predictably affecting every supply chain company who had bet that the USDA would do what they said they would do. Since then my company, Pardalis, has essentially been anchored in a 'safe harbor' called North Dakota State University.

Earlier this year I had discussions with Microsoft-Fargo, and then Microsoft-Redmond, that led up to Microsoft's then Worldwide Director of CRM, ERP and Supply Chain Solutions. What I was saying to Microsoft was that neither Dynamics CRM nor SharePoint were relevant outside of the federated or vertically integrated parts of supply chains. But what was broadly used by SMBs - where CRM and SharePoint were not - was Microsoft Excel. And so the logical next step was to connect supply chains end-to-end with a 'data bank' blah, blah, blah. Honestly, I didn't begin to tune into InfoCards and what Microsoft's Chief Identity Officer, Kim Cameron, had been up to until later in the summer. Cameron is touting the application of transactional "claims" to provide "minimal disclosures" about persons which has now evolved into the Windows Identity Foundation. There's no doubt in my mind that the ERP folks inside of Microsoft should talk to Kim Cameron and the Identity folks in Microsoft but that's something they'll have to figure out on their own, right? :-)

Now traceability is 'sexy' again. Pardalis is moving forward with major land grant institutions (North Dakota State University, Michigan State University, Oklahoma State University) and supply chain participants (like Top 10 Produce) in seeking $5M/5 year USDA funding for a Coordinated Agricultural Project under the Special Crops Research Initiative. This initiative supports research for methods to prevent, detect, monitor, control, and respond to potential food safety hazards in the production and processing of specialty crops, including fresh produce. Central to this research will the development/introduction of item-level means and functions for interoperably connecting agricultural supply chains from 'farm to fork'. The goal is to provide real-time access to the supply chain participants of the total system of data - not just the data presented in GS1 labeling -  relative to product safety, taste, quality, appearance, environmental responses, tolerances, transportation, marketing, storage characteristics , etc.

Like I said, my attendance at IIW9 was strange and familiar, etc. What was missing for me was the application of identity and social networking to supply chains. I suppose one could argue that the term 'supply chain' was there, so to speak, particularly in the IIW9 sessions covering Vendor Relationship Management, but in my opinion it was way in the background waiting to be brought to the forefront. I'm definitely planning on attending IIW #10 in Mountain View in May, 2010, to do my part in helping raise the visibility of supply chains in this mix. I'm really glad to have found my way to the identity movement.

[The foregoing is substantially reprinted from previous contributions made by the author to the Data Ownership in the Cloud group on LinkedIn.]

Organizing Letter of Intent of the Agricultural Data Coordination Consortium (Ag DCC) – Work in Progress

Organizing Letter of Intent of the “Know your Food, Know your Farmer” Agricultural Data Coordination Consortium (Ag DCC) – Work in Progress

WHEREAS, today’s numerous agricultural and food supply chains are being called on more and more to provide two products. One, the traditional plant, animal, processed food or other commodity. And, two, authenticated, traceable data products identifying the source, age, and processes applied to the traditional commodity. While agricultural and food supply chains have been highly efficient in providing traditional commodity products foods, they face numerous technological and sociological challenges in effectively providing authenticated, traceable data products. There is a disconnect between the local farmer and consumers; there is too much distance between the average American and their farmer.

WHEREAS, in recognition of the foregoing, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has commenced a nation-wide effort to create new economic opportunities for supporting local farmers, strengthening rural communities, promoting healthy eating, and protecting natural resources by better connecting consumers with local producers. This effort is the “Know your Food, Know your Farmer” program (http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/knowyourfarmer?navtype=KYF&navid=KYF_MISSION)

WHEREAS, new advances in unambiguous product identification (e.g., radio frequency identification – RFID), the deployment of massive data centers around the world (i.e., “the Cloud”), the concurrent rise of virtual machines for maximizing digital spaces in the Cloud, the increasing available of low-cost software as a service (including social networking sites like FaceBook, Twitter, etc.), and new, technological means and functions for minimal data disclosures and granular data sharing by end-users, provide a convergence of technological opportunities for creating economic opportunities by better connecting consumers with local producers consistent with the USDA’s “Know your Food, Know your Farmer”.

NOW, THEREFORE, we, the undersigned, in recognition of the foregoing, do form the “Know your Food, Know Your Farmer” Agricultural Data Coordination Consortium ( Ag DCC).

THE INTENTS AND PURPOSES of the Ag DCC shall be for the networking of individuals, private entities, and public entities, all meeting and exchanging information in like-minded support of agricultural supply chain data coordination for the furtherance of the USDA’s Know your Food, Know your Farmer program.

The homepage for the Ag DCC shall be a sub-group to the ‘Data Ownership in the Cloud’ (http://tinyurl.com/datacloud) networking group on LinkedIn.

[Editor's Note: This is a work in progress and may be updated without notice. Membership in the Ag DCC is by invitation only. Membership in the Ag DCC requires (1) a LinkedIn profile and (2) membership in the Data Ownership in the Cloud networking group on LinkedIn. Only members of the Ag DCC may be signators to the final, organizing letter of intent for the Ag DCC. For further information, please contact the Editor or leave a comment.]

Update on Friday, January 8, 2010 at 11:14AM by Steve Holcombe

Due to the lack of activity with this LinkedIn sub-group, I closed it in January, 2010. But that's OK because, interestingly, the activity I was hoping for is actually occurring in a separate LinkedIn group called the Agricultural Funding Opportunities (AFO).

The Agricultural Funding Opportunities group is a collaborative research group originally established for coordinating activities in relation to the preparation of a grant application for USDA-NIFA-SCRI-002672 due 14 Jan 2010. The essential premise of the just filed $5M/5YR SCRI application is that providing supply chain participants (including consumers) with more control (i.e., traceability) over their data will increase the availability and quality of product data, and open up new, sustainable business models for both large and small companies. Now further agricultural funding opportunities are being examined by members of this group in the context of the large Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) RFAs solicited by the USDA on 22 March 2010.

This is an invitation-only group. But if you think you would be interested in joining this group to ACTIVELY search for ag funding opportunities, please let me know.

Best,

Steve Holcombe, Owner
Data Ownership in the Cloud
Agricultural Funding Opportunities
http://www.linkedin.com/in/steveholcombe
http://twitter.com/Steve_Holcombe

Update on Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:40AM by Steve Holcombe

The group identified above has now evolved into the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™. The WCTC is comprised at its core of researchers and collaborators from Oklahoma State University, North Dakota State University, Michigan State University, the University of Arkansas, and Pardalis, Inc., an Oklahoma advanced technology company. Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is a trademark of Pardalis, Inc.

Foodproductiondaily.com: Consumer confidence in food manufacturers plunges

Published in Foodproductiondaily.com on 24 June 2009:

New research from the United States suggests that consumer confidence in food companies has plummeted after less than one in five said they trusted firms to develop and sell healthy products ....

Consumer appetite for information about food products has increased over the last two years - with 77 per cent eager for more information on ingredients and 76 per cent interested in it origin. Almost three quarters are prepared to do more research into how the food products are grown, processed and manufactured, said the study.

However, the authors warned: “Despite industry efforts to keep consumers informed with more detailed product information, there's still a significant gap between consumer expectations and what retailers/manufacturers are providing.

For the complete article go to Consumer confidence in food manufacturers plunges.