Michael Arrington and the Gillmor gang: exclusive transcript [2]

OK? So I'm fighting the fight, Michael, excuse me. We continue to demand our rights, that's what I write in this post on May 12th.

Scoble: Steve, I'd like to say that I've been thinking about it for half an hour, I think Mike Arrington's right. I think the user should be in control, and I should have the ability to say that I don't want my email address sucked into third-party services.

Arrington: That was my idea.

Scoble: But wait a second, Mike. I friended you and I gave you access to my email address. And now you're asking Facebook to open up and copy that email address into Google Connect. Where's my rights?

Arrington: I'm sorry. I stopped listening when you said you were sorry and you agreed with. That was all I heard, honestly.

[laughter]

Gillmor: So you're using Mike's idea back on him now.

Scoble: What's that?

Gillmor: Robert, you're using Mike's idea back to haunt him.

Scoble: Exactly. Because he's talking out of two sides of his mouth.

Arrington: Right. Except that I'm not. I'm saying one thing.

Scoble: [...] and then you want control.

Arrington: When it comes to my data, I'm right. That's all. And I'm not joking. When it comes to my data, I'm not fucking interested in Dave Moore's opinion on it. I really am not. I want us to force these companies to do what we want them to do with out data, which is to never fuck with it, never stop us from giving it out when we want to, and never give it out when we don't want to.

Scoble: But you're talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Arrington: And that's why I'm not interested in these moron seminal posts on Marc Canter's blog that he keeps linking to. That's why honestly, Robert, I think you're coming around. You're halfway there, and I appreciate the apology, but honestly, you're got to stop thinking in terms of not getting trashed on the Internet. And you've got to start thinking in terms of becoming a thought leader in this space. Because the people in this cloud make a difference. We can help form what the Internet will become.

Scoble: OK, let me talk. The problem is, you're talking out of both sides of your mouth. You want control of your data, but what is your data? Is it my email address that I just gave you access to? Is that your data or my data. And now we don't have control of it in a granular situation.

Arrington: Hold on, let me respond to that. Because while I think that Chris Saad's argument about "shared custody" or "visitation rights" or whatever was sort of lame, I think that when you give me your email address -- I sort of agree with him, is what I'm saying -- when you give me your email address, I think that I have certain rights to it, unless you ask me to not use it anymore. But I think those rights sort of end at some point. And specifically ends at what sort of rules are put in place implicitly or explicitly.

Saad: That's what I was trying to say at the start of this call, which is your rights end where my rights begin.

Arrington: But, Robert, I think it fundamentally remains your property, and I don't think there's any way to disagree with that. And so I'm not talking out of both sides of my mouth.

Saad: I think right now it depends on the tool that you're using and the social contract you have, as to whose property it is. But over time, we need to evolve to a point where we've actually got a shared understanding of that, and it might require an additional checkbox, where we're explicitly defining whose property it is.

Scoble: The other problem is, when I give you access to my email and you take it over to Google Friend Connect, how do I know that other sites that have access to Friend Connect are going to treat that data the same way Google does or the same way you do?

I personally think that we lose all control when we put our email address out in a public, shareable space.

Saad: That's what I called in my post "the last mile," and that's a social problem, not a technology problem. You need to trust you friends, and then their judgment. We cannot engineer the last mile of security into the systems. And the end of the day, when you reveal some data to someone...


Dana Gardner: But find a way to synergize that across lifestyles, which then leads to other advertising and even beyond advertising, into transactional activities where people are much better matched as buyers and sellers.

Man: Steve, you mentioned Plaxo and Comcast. Have you ever been spammed by Plaxo?

Steve Gillmor: From day one.

Man: [laughs] Yeah, so have I.

Steve: Then we have got Comcast. So there are two wonderful vendors, which have traditionally not given a damn about their users. So they are a match made in heaven on that level.

But I think that Plaxo has matured considerably over the last three or four years from sending Scoble over the wall with a parachute trying to steal all of our data to coming to the Friend Connect Summit on Monday then saying the right things about what's going on.

So I don't know what Comcast is going to do. Comcast has been stealing our data and selling it to - and I say steal in the most loving terms because I'm sure the terms of service support it. But they are selling clicks, all of our clicks of people like me who are using their broadband service. They are selling them to people in New York who harvest this kind of data.

So, $.40 per user per month - it's a lot of money going, a lot of data going out the door. So I'm not sure what that deal represents.


But I think that between what Dana is talking about and what you're talking about, there is this murky middle that I think Arrington was talking about, the ability to harvest the new dynamics of the targeted network in an age of page views and cash potatoes.

I don't I've heard from either of you yet what you think about the dynamics of the deal in that light.

Man 2: Well, Dana had brought up sports. I think Comcast is of course known for being a pipe through which other people push their content.

But Comcast is a content organization in its own right. It's got a pretty extensive sports footprint out there in America's biggest cities. I think they are going to start by trying to build communities around local sports and regional sports and get that very juicy, all-male, 18 to 35 year old demographic with expendable income to socialize online around the Comcast content footprint.

That's what I would do.

Mike Arrington: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think what you are looking at is a -

Steve: You've got to speak up, Mike.

Mike: What you are looking at is they are chasing demographic clouds as you would say. So if you look at the CB and CNet deal, that is a technology/consumer/power/user demographic that goes nicely with a lot of their other investments in various shows and networks.

Everybody is chasing. The cable guys are going to go chase some demographics, whether it is going to be around job sharing or financial info or sports or whatever.

So in some ways we say it is a new media. But in a lot of ways it's starting to behave like old media in terms of demographics and who they are chasing in audiences.

Dana: While the new thing though is that you need to have more than just eyeballs. You need to have e-mail addresses. You need to have metadata preferences, a deep relationship, some kind of stickiness if you really can manage that without pissing everybody off.

That's what translates into the new controlled circulation or tie into a local geography or a newspaper or a ball team. So that's what these people are desperately now seeking.

So Comcast buying Plaxo is really an example, as was Microsoft trying to buy Yahoo of that we have gone beyond the definition of demographic into 'I need to have a digital relationship with a lot of people that I can then turn into bucks.'

Chris: Yeah, and to your point, there are going to be a lot of incentives thrown around to get people to give up that data.

Dana: Yeah.

Chris: So that incentive might be a special offer or a deal on something. Or it might be some extra piece of content, whether it is an extra piece of a television show or if it's an extra web seminar on a topic of particular interest to them, this is going to be free content that entices you into the cloud.

But then there are going to be all these offers of additional content or savings that's going to try and pull you in behind the gated community and make you part of the club.

Mike: I couldn't agree more. Maybe I'm an exception, but for me convenience is a killer application. If these providers can provide to me something that is a benefit, that doesn't waste my time, that holds together information from me to give me better services, then I will willingly give up that information.

Chris: All right. And the balance is going to be how much intelligence do I have to put in the free content to get you there versus how much do I keep in reserve to make you register and be part of the larger club?

Steve: Mike Arrington, are you there?