Prototyping VRM Mobile Social, iPhone

Stuart- Prototyping a mobile VRM that leverages Social Network fabric

iPhone is a good conduit

Phone SMS Email 3.0 notification Bluetooth

Stuart says that we have all these ways to contact people

iPhone adds location

Adds time

Presence – and what I’m doing

Things that recognize that “state has changed”

Relationships provide context regarding “Who are you?”

The questions revolve around access control

“We have this thing in our pocket that provides all these things to us, but we have no control…

…on the other side, the people have no idea what’s happening on this end.”

It doesn’t have to do with calls necessarily, but when it “escalates” from a message

Rules for Pre-call Information

Recipient only knows phone number if the caller is not in the directory

The originator really has no control over what information is provided

Using the rideshare use case… there’s an issue surrounding the Buddylist

Using Google Voice you can treat each caller differently …

Right now Google Voice gives you a “flavor” of all the rules you can attach to incoming calls

Ribbit could be a platform for all of these services

Voice mail treatment on an iPhone is an issue because the iPhone voice mail store is on the device, not on a shared host

Comment – originator may want to indicate a different originating phone

Originator may also want to send a pre-call alert – IM/SMS (the Can you talk” message)

Caveat – you will pile all kinds of capabilities for the power users – but other people won’t use it.

So you need to monitor and analyze all that behavior and deliver

You can establish groups.

Another way to look at it is that you can have my GrandCentral # and it is related to all the ways that I can be reached and will be associated

Need to talk about the difference between synchronous/asynchronous

Is it that important to do a synchronous conversation.

So basically it gets down to hooking up a system where the caller is in control

“In a VRM world, the phone owner is in control” and how you get there is to take away the possibility of the caller to control the terms and conditions

This could be the origination vehicle

The systemic smarts are much more interesting than the granular control

Because the granular stuff should be automated.

You can trick this… just get a fictitious number and point it where you want

• • Stuart has an idea for a Craig’s list for Twitter (called Twitmark) instead of a phone number and address you put a Twitter handle, but what’s missing is the escalation to a phone number. The other thing that’s missing is that you have to do an abbreviated link to (e.g. a Craig’s list ad)…

Another idea that was brought up is the Farley File… whereby you keep track of all the people that you meet.

The phone gets it backwards, inbound now might be able to relate it to a record in the phone infrastructure… But what if you have a “Who’s this?” button to relate other stuff in the social graph and CRM space to figure out who’s calling.

Observation – there’s probably a latency issue. Unless you preload some set of most likely callers and their might be other premapping.

People can more accustomed to “promiscuous messaging” – that is basically ads… “I need x” or “I’m selling Y” then you can also use location awareness to figure out who’s twittering nearby…

Observation – you’re social graph and list of people you’re in touch with

One of the premises for this discussion is that if VRM is going to work, it will be on a mobile device.

Observation – there are a lot of interesting initiatives underway and we have to figure out how they will bolt together.

Some compete Some could augment each other.

We’re talking a lot about the requester time. And not how you find relevant providers … So you need to know “how sees this”?

A: in the twitter example… Daycare companies might have a ‘bot monitoring people’s requests, determining where the person is. They can send a direct message… And they may have their own filter

Narrowcast exchanges…

Which Phil Wolff – calls “search”

E.g Rent-a-Coder O-Desk E-lance

Where you have not a job offer but a short gig. So you craft a message

• • Capability goes in seek of a need and vice versa***

There’s an aggregation function to be served.

If you’re looking specifically for a pair of tennis shoes specifically… It’s not readily apparent exactly how you get to there from here.

Angie’s list + ribbit exposes the latency issue

Stuart is saying that – as things “escalate toward a transaction” and Darius is wondering how you get there from here… Can you make this a “check box” item in their lsting that “for an extra $2 to add a phone number” for the duration of the interest.

Phweet demonstrates that the identity layer can be set up independent of other services.

It will work anywhere and it is initiated on the basis of a text exchange. The contract is a URL for that exchange.

You probably have it in your head… That’s a feature, not a product.

How do you make a product How do you build usage.

Phil – Talked to an eBay employee lately… Asked why do you think eBay never embraced Skype… He said that eBay’s attachment to keeping the conversation controlled so that they couldn’t be cut out of the equation, so they made it harder

As market makers they are also getting a percentage of the transaction so they just put up barriers.

Buy in depends on “what their stake is” if you think the transaction will go on outside their walled garden, they won’t buy in .

E.g. you can architect this so that an assigned, ephemeral URL can be a revenue opportunity for Twitter. The Tweet controls how long the thing stays nailed up. You can do it on Twitter or Identica or anywhere. You can set up a VRM like relationship. And that’s what makes it interesting

Closing… align VRM with the core metrics of each of the service providers.