Persona-summary

ITA white paper executive summary -- April 22, 2011

As the news and paper come unglued, what will sustain for journalism?

Mass-market advertising is no longer sufficient. An emerging Attention Age – characterized by an economy which treats human attention as a scarce and valuable asset -- is transforming the information business. It’s also raising public concern about an escalation of intrusive, privacy-challenging marketing.

The defining challenge for news organizations in the 21st century is no longer managing proprietary stories, but helping the public manage our attention to ubiquitous, disaggregated information. In less than a decade, we have moved from a world of relative information scarcity -- access restricted by a variety of technical choke points, such as presses, to a world of such information abundance that the average user's challenge is not how to access information, or even how find it, but how to personalize, trust and make sense of it.

The Internet has shifted control of information largely from publishers to consumers, who have ubiquitous access, but trouble sorting and acquiring the most trustworthy knowledge. The emerging Attention Economy is transforming the news business. It represents for the institutions which practice journalism a slow death, or a chance to experiment and thrive beyond the era of mass-market advertising. They must become better agents, or “information valets,” for their readers, viewers and users. Trust, identity and information value are core issues, affecting access, convenience, privacy and personalization. The attention economy invites new collaboration among news, advertising, publishing, entertainment, technology, public and philanthropic services. It suggests that publishers can cultivate customized, one-to-one relationships with users, provide them personalized information, and get paid for doing so.

Managing information overload is an opportunity. The Internet as we know it today is not up to this task. This paper recommends (Page 38) an Information Trust Association to create a new, open, multi-party digital marketplace for information that will:

· Flexibly support continued operation of closed, proprietary, “siloed” systems by publishers and other enterprises with direct consumer account relationships.

· Support convenient, trustworthy, personalized services for individuals to find and transact for information vital to their daily lives. The value should be given or received, depending upon whether the individual needs the information or a marketer needs to reach the individual.

· Foster and transparently govern a new openly governed, four-party system for consumers to go outside their chosen “silo,” connecting and exchanging value with other content with identity and privacy under consumer control. (See: “Four-party model” — Choice, control for consumers; opportunity for publishers?” -- pages 46-49).

How this paper is organized – Observation and argument

PART ONE of “From Paper to Persona,” observes and assesses the challenge to publishers and journalism posed by the Attention Age. It suggests the next newsroom will originate news, aggregate news from others and deliver this to individuals based on their persona – a unique combination of age, sex, race, income and education, their values, attitudes, interests, lifestyles and their physical location on earth.

“From Paper to Persona” points to evidence that:

· Information has come unbundled, and no copyright laws will change that · Journalism is expensive, and mass-market web advertising alone will not sustain it. · Sustaining journalism requires rethinking mass-market advertising, and news as a service rather than a product. · Advertising is giving way to targeted, permission-based, direct marketing · Publishers in the old gatekeeper role won’t control the marketing loop · Consumers are aware of privacy and the value of their attention · Trust and identity are building blocks of the new information ecosystem

PART TWO of “From Paper to Persona,” is an argument for a solution -- establishment of a public-benefit initiative to neutrally specify and referee a new marketplace for privacy, trust, identity and information commerce. A world-focused Information Trust Association (ITA) initiative would be guided by publishers, broadcasters, technology companies, account managers, trade groups and the public. It would present a common playing field where consumer privacy is respected, business rules are transparent and the consumer can easily move among competing options. Whether as a new entity or the initiative of an existing public-benefit organization, the ITA’s non-equity governance structure would recognize the interests of at least four parties: (1) end users, (2) rights-holders and publishers (including authors, artists, information providers and aggregators), (3) neutral authenticators, loggers and aggregators of transactions (the ITA or its contractors) and (4) information agents, or “infovalets” -- account managers (banks, telecommunications companies, publishers, billers etc.) whose primary allegiance is to the user. The initiative could:

· Vest greater choice, control and economic value of their privacy and personal information in the hands of individual citizens through voluntary standards. · Foster and govern multisite user authentication services. · Support web wide tracking and billing for “atomized” content. · Simplify the open, competitive exchange of value among users and information suppliers. · Guarantee one-account, one-ID, one-bill simplicity from any of multiple participating trust/identity/commerce providers (“InfoValets”). · Contract or license with one or more for-profit entities, funded by investors, to operate elements of a shared-user network for privacy, trust, identity and information commerce. · Assure the trustworthiness, and neutrality of enabling technologies. · Operate transparently within existing antitrust law to provide a platform for competition, which benefits the public. · Research, test and commission key technologies. · Sanction protocols for sharing users and content. · Use, supportive and enable existing Internet protocols.