This insight is courtesy of Dave Winer via Scripting News:

The current product development process, that focuses on a few supposed geniuses and ignores the intelligence that’s in the user’s minds, same as with unconferences, is about to run its course much as the old style conference can’t possibly compete with one that involves the brains of the people formerly known as the audience. Think about it. There’s a big trend here, imho it’s the difference between the 20th and 21st centuries. In the past the flow of ideas for products was heavily centralized, and based on advertising to build demand. In the future, the flow of ideas for products will happen everywhere, all the time, and products with small markets will be worth making because we’ll be able to find the users, or more accurately, they’ll be able to find us. “Targeting” customers is the wrong metaphor for the future. Instead make it easy for the people who lust for what you have to find you. How? 1. Find out what they want, and 2. Make it for them and 3. Go back to where you found out about it, and tell them it’s available.

Advertising is on its way to being obsolete. Facebook is just another step along the path. Advertising will get more and more targeted until it disappears, because perfectly targeted advertising is just information.

This is why I really like Facebook Beacon, the new service from Facebook that lets buyers notify their networks of their purchases. We are building this into Swift so that as you purchase your conference registration, you can opt in to notifying your Facebook network about it. I believe Dave Winer is right about advertising becoming information. Many of my buying decisions, particularly about “information” are based on the view of people I know. If Mari is going to a conference, I’m going to be much more likely to go. And if I’m going, Sylvia is also likely to go.

Compare this with the alternative: spam from the conference organizer and/or direct snail mail. The former is ineffective; the latter is truly wasteful. I toss all of the snail mail conference solicitations. I just don’t buy that way any more. But I am happy to be informed about people in my network doing things of interest. I do not view it as advertising. I do view it as information.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 1:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.