OPEN

our online identities are comprised primarily of three specific kinds of data:

• Explicit or prescriptive data (i.e. the data that I input about myself: name, age, occupation, etc.);
• Activity or behavioral data (i.e. what I do and say online);
• Relationship data (i.e. my social graph and what my connections say about me).

If we consider the power of this pragmatic Web (a highly relevant and individualized Web experience based on the ubiquity of our identity data), we find that it not only impacts individual user experience, but that it opens up entirely new opportunities for business online. The future is not “business as usual.” Business models will be based on what Elias Bizannes of the Data Portability Project calls the “information value network-economic value,” derived from services that focus on activities with comparative advantage and that leverage free access to data.

Consider this: as media companies scramble to identify new and innovative ways to advertise to the sea of nameless, pixeled users who graze through their content each day, a rich supply of highly valuable identity data lies just beneath the surface, left unmeasured and unmonetized.

M’learned colleague Alisa Hansen, of iCrossing NYC, recently published this post on ReadWriteWeb about how our identity will affect how the web works for us…

It’s an important concept – I’m particularly taken with her neat categorisation of the three kinds of identity data we have online: explicit, behavioural and relationship…

Tags: search, identity, personal, web, pragmatic