Commentary by Mark Wahl, CISA
Organizing principles for identity systems:
Digital ID World keynote: Managing the Decentralization of Identity (20070924)
Doc Searls, in his presentation on "Managing the Decentralization of Identity" at the DIDW conference (DIDW2007), presented several vendor relationship issues affecting digital identity, including
private social networks do not make a marketplace
First, that existing social networks are walled gardens
. Second, the "users" in most major social networking services are not the customers: the collection of users is merely the enabler for the relationship between the social networking service and the advertisers. Thus, activities enabling better user-driven integration between services might undercut this actual customer relationship.
own the customeris analogous to slavery
In a marketplace, the independence of the customers is their ability to make choices between vendors, which runs counter to the idea of customer lock-in. In the VRM model, Mr. Searls suggests that building relationships between customers and vendors will be a better foundation for defining tools that enable markets, than tools driven by transactions or traditional CRM.