ARTICLE NO. 31    February 10, 2006

The value of memory

by Troy Young
As the web becomes central to how we research, shop and broadly navigate the world of information, several new services are emerging that help us remember and share our experiences. The offline equivalents are many – photo albums, clipping services, coupons, a bulletin boards… the fridge door. Del.icio.us, was a pioneer in the space, the first to put forward the notion of social bookmarking. With a geek edge and command-line like experience, del.icio.us offered the web set a way to remember and a way to share their attention. The community grew and del.icio.us was recently folded into Yahoo!. remembering is a declaration of intention, intention is the heart of permission marketing At Demo this year, two new comers in the space are vying for attention. Kaboodle is a smart twist on the social bookmarking concept is essentially a shopping assistant or global wish list, giving users the ability to easily capture pages from the entire web in a single interface. Say you find a digital camera on Ebay. Kaboodle gives you a tool to capture that page and store it on your personal Kaboodle shopping lists. As you move around the web, you can capture offers from any site and compare and share them inside your Kaboodle list. Useful? For sure. Plum, also at Demo, offers similar tools but without the shopping focus. Its goal is to help you put all of your favorite stuff in one place – photos, posts, emails, feeds, etc… It’s still in pre-beta and should be released in the next couple of months. These services join a number of other offers Clipmarks, Simpy, Blinklist, Shadows that occupy a related space. The business appeal is clear – remembering is a declaration of intention, intention is the heart of permission marketing and a hugely valuable signal for marketers. When you remember you declare yourself “in the market”. Keyword advertising is revolutionizing marketing with a similar but less potent proposition. Search is a key declaration of intention and obvious targeting opportunity. Tagging, clipping, etc… are more focused, closer to transaction and more valuable as a result. A few months ago, at Ad:tech’s “Damn I wish I thought of that” session, I presented the concept of turning online interruptive advertising into permission marketing. You can read about it here. This is a powerful evolution in marketing and a fascinating space to watch.

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February 10, 2006
Interesting article Troy. This is certainly an exciting space to watch. How do you think these new comers are going to tempt the veteran del.icio.us users away from Yahoo! Maybe they don’t need too? I love the concept behind these new services and the idea is very appealing from a users perspective. I know I would certainly use a service like this if it had ‘all the right tools’. One other thing, do you not think Google Homepage, Yahoo Homepage and Microsoft Live are also big players in this space?
February 10, 2006
I think the game is its very early stages. Right now we are seeing the emergence of some very nice verticle tools like kaboodle that support shopping much better that delicious does. I think the portals will acquire / develop many of these services as the space matures a bit. Thanks for your comment!
March 23, 2006
As it stands, the web is still in a larger part a “human experience”. It’s only a matter of time before everyone and their friends have robots / scripts / software programmed to do the social marketing for them, based on a set of personal preferences. At that point, it’ll be even more valuable to interact with another human being directly. Right now, it’s fairly easy to get an answer back from an e-mail, for instance. As such, you’re absolutely right, memory is a value to build upon, even in this digital age.
February 10, 2006
As it stands, the web is still in a larger part a “human experience”. It’s only a matter of time before everyone and their friends have robots / scripts / software programmed to do the social marketing for them, based on a set of personal preferences. At that point, it’ll be even more valuable to interact with another human being directly. Right now, it’s fairly easy to get an answer back from an e-mail, for instance. As such, you’re absolutely right, memory is a value to build upon, even in this digital age.
February 10, 2006
I think the game is its very early stages. Right now we are seeing the emergence of some very nice verticle tools like kaboodle that support shopping much better that delicious does. I think the portals will acquire / develop many of these services as the space matures a bit. Thanks for your comment!
February 10, 2006
Interesting article Troy. This is certainly an exciting space to watch. How do you think these new comers are going to tempt the veteran del.icio.us users away from Yahoo! Maybe they don’t need too? I love the concept behind these new services and the idea is very appealing from a users perspective. I know I would certainly use a service like this if it had ‘all the right tools’. One other thing, do you not think Google Homepage, Yahoo Homepage and Microsoft Live are also big players in this space?
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