How many SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) exist out there that have
little or no access to e-commerce channels?

Today, in order to put their offers out for the web to see, any given
Business needs to:
* Design and build a website or store
* Invest in SEO / Ads
* Build a community or somehow exploit social media to get their message across

And all that so your products can be found while searching for text
keywords or targeted by inaccurate ( at best ) affiliate platforms!

Sounds like a lousy deal to me ;)
An incremental improvement over current commerce, yes. But nothing radical.
Customers still have to "walk" into a store.

And you have to build that store, paint it, and make it look attractive.

Hmm. 

You know what I would like?
I would like to write my offerings in a spreadsheet from my notebook
and have them automatically "connect" to a global, structured Database
where affiliates, matchmaking systems, Google, etc take care of
finding and sending me a potential buyer with 90% specificity.

I give it two years before this becomes mainstream. Google already
bought Metaweb, and Good Relations + Linked Data are penetrating fast.
In two years I will be able to update a spreadsheet ( or a backend )
and get instant, highly specific visibility. No need for a designer or
even for a pitch.

Also. Keep in mind that this is not a "secondary" idea. This is an
innovation at the core of the web: Commerce and Advertising will
change.

We call this Linked Open Commerce ( in relation to Linked Data, one of
the potential tech enablers ). But it will come in many shapes, forms
and labels.

http://linkedopencommerce.com/

This is a quick note for the Web Foundation Open Government Data guys
looking at Chile as a candidate.
To the list of virtues that we all love and cherish add the following
political topping:

Mr Piñera:
By implementing and enforcing Linked Open Data policies during this
presidential ( 2010 - 2014 ) period you will achieve two things:
* Easily reveal the status of "currently" mis-managed ( ehem. Corrupt
) institutions. This data need not be analyzed now, but it will stay
"for the record" and someone will join the dots ( a University, NGO,
etc ).
* Dramatically increase the visibility of all transactions during the
next administration. This will most probably be a deterrent for all
those trying to return to a job where they make money w/o moving a
finger. ( and, yeah. A corruption killer as well ).

Piñera has 3 years to make a change to the platform. OGD provides a
unique opportunity to make such positive, irreversible and strategic
change with long term projection and high ROI.

Also, for short term ROI, there is PR: being amongst the first
countries to get on top of Linked Data powered OGD.

Regarding execution strategy: Grassroots is not an option, we need the
govt, money and a LAW.

For those contacting me for this very same purpose today (
participating in Open Data in Chile ), my official statement is this:
I have the will to provide support, training and participate in such
effort as long as we go all the way up to the president. I don't want
to spend any more time fighting middle ranks that only lead us to more
bureaucracy. I already burnt too much money and you should learn from
this experience.

No grassroots. We don't have a large enough developer base.
No middlemen. They don't have the authority to "hand over" the data,
much less implement repeatable and sustainable processes ( which cost
money ).

Also. Beware of big tech companies here who are used to getting ALL
govt projects. The only way OGD will work is if we democratize this
and create an open ecosystem, right from the source.

So,
1. Remember the pitch above
2. Aim for grants for small teams, including universities
3. Avoid big companies that will try to land EXCLUSIVE contracts
4. Define a set of no more than 5 easy practices that should be enforced by law.

This is a huge infrastructure biz opportunity as well. So watchout for
the sharks. Of course, WF directors know that.

Keep it open

And bring it on ;) !!!

The easiest way to understand what the next stage of the web will be
like is to take a deep look at Facebook.
Zuckerberg got it right. He (they) managed to attract users and build
a web within the web because he solved the two most critical pending
issues:

1. Structured-ness
2. Identity

Facebook tackled structuredness by simplifying the problem first.
Instead of trying to model "all the possible things" that exist on the
web, they chose to structure the 20% that generates 80% of the value (
people, events, relations, etc ) in the activity that was most
unattended. ( social interaction ). They may have started aiming for
something simpler, but I am sure they figured this out sooner rather
than later. The graph! They were hosting the famous goddam graph
within the web!

Identity was a consequence of getting structured-ness right. Plus, it
was easily achievable, enforcable and distributable within a walled
garden.

Notice that this is all they did. Fix two issues. With that in place,
users and developers simply filled in the blanks.

Now the blue empire is starting to piggyback our browsing activity to
bring the whole web inside of their framework via a set of protocols
and APIs ( opengraph, stream, likes, connect ). This is natural, and
smart. It may sound terrifying to some, but it is actually good for
all of us.

Why?

Well, because the biggest barrier was never technical. It was our
perception of how the web was supposed to be. People got it wrong and
steering the ship proved to be harder than expected. Facebook is
kindly teaching us to "expect" single sign on, to "demand" a portable
graph of friends; In short: to dissociate the data from the container.

Developers are slowly figuring it out now. They are realizing that
there has always been built-in structured-ness in the web and that
they were somehow misled to believing that things were hard. In fact,
they are even simpler than Facebook puts it.

The identity part, on the other hand, has not always been there. But
it is finally crystallizing after several experiments ( OpenID, OAuth,
etc ).

You will soon make a "record" for yourself in this giant database, and
it will all start making sense ;)

Structured-ness and Identity.
The two new features that the web will massively roll-out starting 2011:

Linked Data + WebID

Georgi asked: What Would You Build With a Web of Data?. Richard McManus found the invitation worthy of a Read Write Web post and thus far it has become home for an interesting discussion.

I agree with several of the proposed ideas and I dislike others. But that's the beauty of this thing, that everyone will come at it from a different angle and, serendipitously along the way, we will run into pieces of each other's construction that fit our own vision. It's the nature of this giant human meshup we call "the web".

Here's my personal favorite app: A Better World.

Recently we had an 8.8 quake down here in Chile and several people died. Almost none if you compare this to Haiti or China. We had roughly 500 casualties. But nevertheless, we should have had zero. None. Zilch.

And this becomes evident when you analyze the causes of each death. Some of them are due to corruption and malpractice in the construction business. The vast majority of them were due to blunt negligence: a tsunami hit several localities after the quake but the alarm system didn't do its thing. In fact, the confused messaging that got across even encouraged some families to stay home while they could have easily walked "by foot", with no hurries, to a safe place.

There are people to be held accountable for all of this. Today, yesterday, 10 years ago, in the future and everywhere around the world. This anecdote is a symptom of a widespread and ancient social pandemic that is very hard to erradicate: negligence, corruption and lack of accountability.

A Web of Data would win in the long run. We should be able to go back and see why the Tsunami alert system was not in good shape and figure out where the missing satellite phones went ( if they were ever bought ).

In fact, the propsect of being implicitly accountable for anything would have enticed the responsible parties to do the job right in the first place. No one wants to go against his own interests. Not even the worse sociopaths. In fact, they would be the first ones to become "extremely good". So, while the deepest cause will remain, we would have effectively turned the tables on the problem.

( one name for this App could be: implicity accountability ).

We would also be able to rebuild the country faster and in a more agile manner if we had the "loose coupled coordination" that is naturally derived from a shared data substrate and a single world view. It is very hard to coordinate people in such a rush and, just like in the enterprise, information fragmentation has become enemy number 1.

And the blessing is that the enterprise understands this problem, and they are willing to pay and work to achieve this, again, in their own interest. Therefore, it is just a matter of time until my favorite app is in place.

Those that have heard my presentations know by heart what I always say: The only scarcity we have to overcome in order to fix the pending issues of our society is the Cost of Information Integration. All the other elements are present:

• Most people already want to help
• Those that don't will find an incentive once the attribution mechanisms are in place, courtesy of the Web of Data ( remember that identity & reputation are the new gold )
• Goods can already be quickly moved across the world in a granular and efficient fashion given that you know the destination

So, my favorite app is definitely "A Better World".

As for the other ideas, they are all steps in this direction and will contribute their bit for my favorite app ;)

The global roadmap is unstoppable!

 

I thought Chile was going to be further down the OpenData adopters
list, but I am pleased to announce that it is all happening as you
read this.
The recent 8.8 mega quake/tsunami + the entry of a new ( oppositional
) goverment converge to generate a very special scenario.

On one hand, the country is in distress and we need to hastefully
increase our agility in order to react to the acute crisis and long
term reconstruction phases. Situational analysis is poor because data
is fragmented. Logistics are deficient and planning depends on data. The
success in all three timeframes ( short, mid and long term ) seems to depend
on the very same fuel: information. 

But lets zoom in to short term, which is the drive today:
Everyone wants to help but they are running into each other or going
to the wrong places. 25 vets arrive where tents are needed, and the
tents end up in a pile somehwere.
Yeah, it is that bad. The disaster left severe infrastructural damages
and, if we were fragmented before, we are totally enthropic now.

So that's one side of the story: *we need to integrate what we know
and we need to do it now*. Linked Data is a blessing the best tool at
hand.

Now onto the second item:

The incoming government will see fierce opposition and it will have to
dodge several kinds of attacks. These will come in ( at least ) two
shapes:
* Trying to make the new govt pay for errors stemming from the past.
We already saw this happen with the recent country-wide blackout. This
is clearly a ghost from the past but go tell that to the media
monster. And then try to stop it from eating you when you don't even
have the correct data at hand. Someone made a mistake, but it is hard
to know who.
* Stopping initiatives on their tracks because of the fierce
opposition in government. Congress can loose its blocking power if
people are informed of what's being proposed.

I'm not saying the new govt won't craft its own collection of
mistakes. But we should not make it harder for them. After all, while
politicians fight for power, it is the people below that pay the price
and in moments like these we simply can't afford that.

So there you have it. Two alignments. And I can see more, but these
should be enough to jump through the first obstacles ( finally! ).
Now, let's make it happen.

First milestone is done. Initial group of developers have been
evangelized and they are all willing to get their hands on some data.
Now, let's organize the World Bank's crisis camp in such a way that
NGOs can provide us their data and their requirements.

Lots of work ahead!

Links:
* http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/02/27/chile.quake/index.html
* http://opendata.cl/
* http://bitbucket.org/abucchi/opendata-chile/wiki/Home

( I posted this via email )