Jeremy Ballenger raises some interesting questions about x:posted, and more precisely, about the methods and tactics that should be used in raising the Intention Economy barn.

…seems a little like consignment sales, sell-side driven to provide a service to buyers. Intention (going by Doc’s idea) is more like buyers yelling ‘I want to buy X‘ and sellers falling over themselves to get to you. X:posted is a central respository or market for sellers – buyers visit and sample the wares. In other words, you still have to go to them. Similar sites are eLance and Guru.I might have misinterpreted Doc’s original idea, but to me something like x:posted or Shel’s approach is close, but not quite there. A functioning intention economy, and for the moment we are restricted to discussing web-enabled commerce, seems to essentially be a search problem. On reflection, my earlier thoughts on this were a little off in describing buyer searches. I think it might actually work the other way, through seller search, buyer filters and maybe even the intelligent use of something like tags.

think mojo

I think he’s right, based on what’s presented in this post. I think we’ve come a long way in terms of the definition of what we’re building and the direction in which we’re moving towards with Social Roots – definitely the thesis is much deeper.

However, Jeremy goes on to add some more fuel to the mixture.

With the increasing use of tags, blog uptake and developments in search technology, this is an example that may have some legs. Ideally, an independent operation would develop the vendor search technology under open source (GNU), alongside parallel development of a plugin for bloggers providing ‘intention tags’. I’ve got nothing against Google (aside from the whole censorship-in-China-thing), but a benefit of the intention economy should be lower transaction costs.

think mojo

The remainder begins an open consideration of providing more and more value to third parties. I think we’ve seen this problem many times over. For example, one point he seems to lay out is that independent parties can come along, spider the web, and essentially sell leads against it. That’s probably great news – for all the usual players. The incentive to search, parse, and store data on resources that makes you know money is considerable and eventually – no one’s indexing people looking for Irish Wool, just home refinance.

As for the disparity in costs for these systems, as noted “The more
cash you have, the better search technology you can afford.” the
reality is that that’s a two-way street. You’ll also need bath tubs
full of cash to index the world to find the valuable intentions.

At the same time, we have another pit to overcome – incentive. This problem correlates nicely to the barriers being faced by the Structured Blogging / Microformats groups. Why exactly do I bother to markup this data? Why do I add work to my workflow? Is there an inventive for me other than being a better citizen? Once that’s proven, there’s more traction in all directions.

We’ve had to spend considerable time as we’ve built Social Roots to understand how to create enough value for the user without having cold, hard cash. It’s very difficult and we don’t know if it will work. Chicken and egg indeed.

I recommed everyone join in on this conversation. There’s quite a lot at stake here.

technorati tags:structured+blogging, microformats, economy, intention+economy, doc+searls, marketplaces, socialroots

Well, I’ve been home for a week straight so that means it’s time to start thinking about my next trip (haha, it’s scary that’s almost true).

I’m considering heading out to the Bay Area, specifically to attend the ad:tech conference on April 26-28th. I’m also hoping to poke my head into the Startup School happening in Stanford on Saturday, April 29th.

My goal with the trip is to continue conversations about x:posted and to begin to meeting with individuals, companies and other organizations that are considering utlizing social media as a source for their content needs.

I’m contemplating coming out on the 25th and and leaving on the 1st. If you’re curious about what we’re doing and would like to know more, please let me know.

Update: Did I say forming? It’s officially booked. Now time to put the meetings on the calendar.

I’ve been involved in web design for more than 9 years now (hard to believe it’s been that long). In my high school days, into college, and well beyond, I’ve had a keen eye for design. Part of that obsession has generally required that I have a high-resolution screen in front of me at all times – I can’t stand low-res.. it’s too inefficient for my needs (try managing your Illustrator palettes at 640 x 480 and get back to me).

When I first started, 640 x 480 was the max you could go for. Of course, it was really more like 600 x 390 or something when all the button bars were turned off. I can remember fondly the day we decided to start designing for 800 x 600. It was “cutting edge” as they say. It’s hard describe what it’s like to get that extra breathing room.

It’s many years later now and we’ve moved to even higher resolutions, though, largely, our expectations haven’t changed as much. Or so I thought. We’ve been working on the new version of the x:posted site and we realized that we were seeing more and more 1024 x 768 sites. We even saw some that were even wider!

Yesterday, the NY Times released a new version of the site as well. Guess what? It’s wide.

Are we finally past the point that 1024 is the norm? It’s possible, but I’m sticking to old faithful for a little while longer.

I came across this a week or more ago.. I’ve been super busy getting things in order here so I haven’t had time to post much (I’m in Utah working with the team as we speak).

This caught my eye mostly as it relates to xposted. Here’s a juicy nugget from the comments:

Bloggers are not journalists in general, except for what we report about our own lives, and then there is no verification, there is no fact-check, there is no responsibility to anyone but ourselves. To compare bloggers in general to the print newsmedia is just… apples and oranges. Now, bloggers who report the news? Sure. Hold them to account, ask the big questions. But the woman in Sheboygan writing about her pansies? She could n’t care less about her “mandate” or the “group voice” or “undermining the mass media.” She’s just telling stories the way her grandmother did. It’s just that now — and this seems impossibly lovely to me — others can benefit besides her intimates, if they wish.

It may be amateurish, but giving individuals a voice is never a bad thing.

Source: Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment, “Blogs: threat or menace?”

I think this question is on the minds of people from both sides of the fence – mainstream and social media. The answer is surely not definitive considering the many shades of truth that exist around any particular story or experience.

We’ve been making significant strides on the code side of things and we’d like to up the ante for participating publishers. Next week some time, assuming I get enough time this weekend, we should have a new release of the code live.

I’ll save the details for next week, but, essentially, you will be able to actually try x:posting content from your blog to another with a couple of clicks.

In the meantime, if you haven’t signed up yet for x:posted, go ahead now and get your blog registered with the system.

Mike May has an interesting commentary on how to better compensate citizen journalists for their work – treat ‘em like people!

• The value of citizen publisher content to advertisers or sponsors should be no less than the value of freelance writing contributions for publishers. The industry standard for freelance writing is $1 per word. Blogs, then, should be valued, on average, at $1 per word.
• The word-count contributing to this value is to include comments on the site. Blogs richer in conversation are considered valuable by all measures, and the writers who stimulate and sustain that conversation should be likewise compensated.

Source:Eventing.com, “A Buck a Word”

I think that Mike makes an interesting point, however, I think that the two things need to be separated to a certain extent. Specifically, perhaps we should consider two points that buyers might “use against” a $1 per word model (I’m only playing Devil’s advocate):

• Intention – The $1 per word rate, I am assuming, is for works that are intentionally prepared for a source. I’m going on my past experiences with copy writers. We had a specific need for a piece of content, we provided a high-level view of the key points we needed to make, and they delivered a finished work, with multiple rounds of edits, that satisfied our need.

  A blog post surely could operate on this level of scrutiny, though it’s not the norm just yet. To that end, we imagine that there will be a need connect buyers to sellers that can produce commissioned works.

• Ownership – To sell it means to own it. It’s not clear that in all cases, comments are owned by the owner of the site. If they were sold, I’d rather see that money go to the commentator.

  I don’t think Mike is saying that he should sell those comments. He’s more asserting that the value of the author, and hence their works, is greater when that author is able to generate conversation and dialog.

  We fully support this notion and it is a core part of the system. Ultimately, we are not in control, though, since the owners of the content are free to choose whatever pricepoint they deem appropriate. The market will determine if it gets bought or not.

What’s your post worth? How much per word? Would you even charge per word?

I’m joining the x:posted community. Yes, even I have to get approved the good old fashioned way – by linking to my profile so I can prove that I own this blog.

If you’d like to see this publication’s profile, check it out here:
http://xposted.com/publications/show/15.

Doc Searls has a really interesting piece up regarding, as he calls it, the Intention Economy. What does it mean? How’s this:

The Intention Economy grows around buyers, not sellers. It leverages the simple fact that buyers are the first source of money, and that they come ready-made. You don’t need advertising to make them.

The Intention Economy is about markets, not marketing. You don’t need marketing to make Intention Markets.

The Intention Economy is built around truly open markets, not a collection of silos. In The Intention Economy, customers don’t have to fly from silo to silo, like a bees from flower to flower, collecting deal info (and unavoidable hype) like so much pollen. In The Intention Economy, the buyer notifies the market of the intent to buy, and sellers compete for the buyer’s purchase. Simple as that.

Source: Doc Searls’ Blog, “The Intention Economy”

It’s that last paragraph that really grabbed me however (I think the whole idea makes sense and have had my own share of issues fully grokking the Attention Economy). x:posted is developing exactly the type of market that Doc is describing – in our case we’re connecting buyers to the intellectual property they are seeking via a centralized repository.

As Doc puts it, “The Intention Economy is about buyers finding sellers, not sellers finding (or “capturing”) buyers.” That’s exactly how our system works. We simply ask who is willing to sell up front, but have no further expectation UNTIL a buyer has selected that seller.

Thanks to Stowe for the pointer – now go finish verifying your blog for us!