BLOG: Creating Value With Metadata

This has been the problem on the web for a long time. Way back when the web was a baby, a friend of mine wrote a simple perl script to track ad views for iVillage.

Ad servers have been tackling this forever. I wrote an ad server for a client last year, which tracks very very specific data on users clicks, ad views and resulting purchases. But even there, the data had to be collected via opt-in. Meaning the users had to give it to us. This ad server was in the form of signing up for coupons and give-aways. But that's the whole business model. Offer these things, collect the data, then sell it.

This is where portals like MySpace and Facebook come in handy. They are able to track all of that because their members supply it. They can track very specifically what users are doing with each click and page view. They have the audience already. I think this is where it's all headed right now.

I was at a FaceBook Developer conference earlier this evening and they are working on something called Facebook Connect, basically a single-sign-on for the whole web. I am going to look into this more, but it seemed to be going for what many have tried before(tried and died). But it might be interesting because from what I understood, partner sites would use the FaceBook login as their credentials. So users would not have to create new users. But partner sites might gain access to all of this metadata.

Anyway, I have been following your every move with eagerness, and even bought the DIY days DVD. I am likely going to pursue such a course with my first feature this year, so I would be very glad to get involved in working on some options.

I am a software developer by trade, so have started to look at ways to apply those skills to this.
 
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