TechCrunch highlights Root.net, a service that aims to be the “first open market for the pricing and exchange of realtime consumer data.” That sounds exactly right. It leverages the Attention Trust platform which is (simplifying a bit) a recorder that plugs into Firefox and records your clickstream locally and gives you controls to manage what is kept and what isn’t. The idea is that by putting you into control of your data and offering you incentives to share some of it, they create a market for advertisers, publishers, and consumers to exchange information. Advertising gets better and more relevant for you and because you’re in control, theoretically you control what you want to share. You can read more about the guiding principles of the Attention Trust non-profit if you like.

Whether this sounds great or creepy I think depends entirely on either your sense of paranoia or your concern about privacy issues. At first blush, this would seem a bit Big Brotherish. When you think about this, though, most people are already giving this kind of data away. On an opt-in level, anyone that has the Google or Yahoo toolbars installed with certain features (e.g. PageRank) activated is already giving away this information. Heck, Alexa, owned now by Amazon, has turned this data collection into products. Companies such as WebSideStory or Nielsen could probably generate similar information depending on the penetration of their stats services. Google is also getting close because of the popularity of their ad service.

Regardless, though, I won’t be trying this thing except to perhaps play around with it. I pretty much fall to the more concerned about privacy side of life. I realize how much data I “give” away so the thought of actively aiding that process doesn’t sound like something I want to be a part of. Second, I think the benefit to consumers is pretty lame. I don’t want better targeted ads. I want less ads bombarding me. I don’t think a market that monetizes combining users and advertisers and publishers wants fewer of those interactions, which is ultimately what I want.

I’m still keeping my mind open, because the people involved are good, honest, and bright people. For now, I just don’t think this is for me.

This is going to be the norm now for commerce sites, but eBay finally dropped the fees for use of their third-party commerce APIs. These are the things that allow third parties to create applications and tools that lead people into eBay or, say, Amazon. Amazon is the most commonly used API, I would think, as so many tools integrate calls to the API directly.

It will be interesting to see if non-commerce sites get into the API business in a big way. Not sure what they’d do, exactly, but I’m still curious. For example, what APIs could ESPN.com offer? Since revenue is made via advertising, mostly, those hits and impressions count.

Just go read it — I had the same reaction when I started getting those emails…

Enough already about Flock. Flock is the top item on Memeorandum with everyone talking about it. I downloaded it last night after I got an email from Josh suggesting I check it out. After using it for a bit last night, I have to say great idea but, um, why can’t this be an extension?

I don’t want to spend too much time on this right now (I’m basically waiting for something to finish on my computer at work), so I’ll point to Om Malik’s review and Frederico Oliveira’s post which pretty much captures my thoughts on this:

Now, don’t get me wrong. I like the idea and the team, they’re great guys and really talented developers. But being 100% honest, I’m still not sure I’m changing my browser to have a way to integrate delicious and a blogging tool into my browsing experience. I know some people will, but I’m not sure about numbers.

As they both say, don’t get me wrong… this is a cool development and some of the UI concepts and integration, e.g. the Flickr to blog integration, are really nice and, in some cases, extraordinarily brilliant. But, I don’t see why this can’t be a standalone application, even using the Mozilla engine that integrates via XPCOM IPC to integrate with Firefox. That would allow me to use Firefox and the rich set of (tested/common) extensions with Flock’s otherwise awesome tools. The Shelf (#13 on the list) is very, very cool. I’ve been looking for something like that for a few years and have just been too lazy/busy to write it.

The biggest source of confusion, I think, is the disconnect between their goal of “innovating the web browser user experience” and the fact that, well, Flock looks like Firefox with a fancy theme and some extra doodads. It’s not really innovating the experience that much yet, and so the hype is out of sync with the current state of development.

I look forward to hearing more from them and seeing what version 1.0 looks like (this is version 0.4.8). If you’re curious about their overall plan, the founder of Flock has a rundown of the overall plan and an explanation of why they chose to build a browser.

Good luck to them.

The founder of Ebay, Pierre Omidyar, is on stage right now talking about a new fund he has created called The Omidyar Network. He’s started the fund with over $400 million of his own money with the goal of fostering business that “does good” in the world. He wants to fund businesses and non-profit and policy enterprises that have as a direct result of their business model the direct empowerment of individuals. This could be in terms of economic empowerment (a la Ebay), social empowerment, or anything else.

It’s an interesting idea. While I’ve been turned off by the whole VC frenzy around here, this one makes me smile. Business can do good, business does do good, and anything that can encourage businesses that do actually do good, well, I’m all for that. It’s a very progressive thing.

They do want to actually make a return on their investment and it’s not a charity in the traditional sense (though I’m not sure how it can’t be for “policy efforts” or non-profits). It will be interesting to watch this grow and proceed. I hope it works…

Kareem just passed on this reaction to the conference so far. I agree with most of it, and it’s rather disappointing. This conference, including the mingling and networking going on around here are focused on monetization and investment. Which is fine, but it isn’t what the conference was billed as.

The most interesting session so far was the tagging workshop early and the various little “Show Me” sessions. As I complained yesterday, the big names are cool, but they aren’t interesting. We haven’t done enough to discuss any of the bigger issues coming up with the new APIs. Might’ve been interesting to talk about how big companies like ESPN.com or CNet or CNN can participate in this space, but maybe I’m being a bit selfish. Of course, I find it telling that CNN.com, one of the biggest content portals/sites only sent one guy.

Overall, I’ve found the conference to be a bit too insular, the San Fran/Silicon Valley “in crowd” talking to each other about, well, each other. And, talking about products directed at each other and not my sisters or my friends or whatever. Established companies and startups looking for cash all telling us how cool they are without talking much about how interesting the space is becoming. What’s missing is how we move from where we are today, where Web 2.0 is almost blasé, to real conversations and what the implications are of tagging and open APIs and whatever.

Some areas I wish we had covered more in official conference sessions: opening tagging to the wider community (to non-techies/non-bloggers)… what functionality would we like to see in browsers to augment Web2.0? What are the characteristics of a Web 2.0 app this year vs. last (a workshop on this topic isn’t enough).

Just some ideas. Given some time to think about it, I’m sure I could come up with a ton more…

Google just launched Google Reader on Google Labs. Reader is an online RSS aggregator similar to BlogLines and NewsGator. The main thing I noticed that I really like is that they went label/tag based instead of folders, similar to GMail. If you’re used to the GMail organization paradigm (and I love it, by the way), this will make a lot of sense to you. It has some support for podcasts and enclosures, so that will be interesting to watch as well.

Update: Import doesn’t seem to work right in Safari.

I’m watching the Sxip presentation given by CEO Dick Hardt. I spoke to their marketing person yesterday and went to their little shindig up in their suite and have to say, I’m still skeptical. Very quickly, Sxip aims to create a user-centric identity system they’re dubbing Identity 2.0. The idea is a single sign-on (SSO) system that, unlike systems like Passport, puts you in control of which companies host your data, what data to share, and which data from which provider to share. So, theoretically, if you had an ESPN.com account, you could make ESPN.com the authority for one of your online identities. If you went to Amazon.com, in a Sxip/Identity 2.0 world, you’d be able to tell Amazon to use ESPN.com to authenticate you. ESPN.com would only pass on the registration data you authorized to Amazon. Sxip doesn’t have to be the solution for Identity 2.0, but of course they want to be the preferred choice.

The problem I see with this system is that it’s too cumbersome for users. The problem I have isn’t that I have multiple identities on different sites, but that I have to fill out the same email, name, address, phone number, etc. all over the place. It’s annoying. I do actually really like having multiple identities.

The system doesn’t do anything about naive users making “bad” privacy choices. Instead, if I add my cell phone, say, for a particular site to use, I might just always opt to have my authority site (home site in Sxip jargon) keep that data too. Just for ease of use, if nothing else.

What I’d rather see is a browser/computer centric solution that would allow users to store certain data on the client and then come up with a microformat-style system where the browser or a plugin could fill in the form using the hints provided in the form.

That would be simple, and easy for users to understand. Every time they add data to the local schema, it’s always convenient and it makes it more difficult for users to make “bad” privacy choices. People just read forms, see the fields that get filled in, and then can either just delete the fields they see filled in. Perhaps the persona idea from Web 2.0 could be stored locally as well. Anyway, anything that works well on the client and keeps data with me I think is better. Most users won’t know this, but will get the convenience of SSO and simplified registration. That’s all we really need, right?

I’m having a good time at the Web 2.0 Conference. An observation: having really big business guys at a conference like this isn’t all that interesting. I mean, they’re smart people but because of competitive and legal reasons, they really can’t say much of anything interesting. Too often, Battelle asks pointed and interesting business questions that the business guy on the hot seat can’t actually answer. So, the entire conversation ends up being a pointless dance where the best you can hope for is an obtuse hint at some insight.

The geeks, on the other hand, especially the startup geeks, are much more interesting because people don’t actually try to ask them business questions… instead, they get asked their opinion on technology and trends which is quite valuable and actually much more relevant to the business folks in the room. Just a thought.

You should look to the ‘micro blog’ to the right for interesting companies and pages I’ve seen here or just check out my del.icio.us links tagged with web2con.

So far, my biggest takeaway is that APIs are the critical development enabling most Web 2.0 applications. True, user experience and Ajax and the various other things people talk about are important to the emerging applications, but at the end of the day the biggest change is the business change. APIs and applications like AdSense and AdWords allow business-to-business interactions on a different scale. With the right infrastructure (including Terms of Use), companies can allow the smallest company or an individual to sign up easily and create a business relationship with little effort.

Think about that for a second. When a large company like Ebay or Amazon might normally only have the manpower to do traditional deals with the top 5% of potential partners, those that will make them the most money, this model allows a small startup like Delicious Monster do an extensive integration with them.

I’m enjoying this phase of Internet development and I’m getting more ideas just being here.