We have:

A) Big data silos, Web2 behemoths craving for more data, and

B) A blockchain protocol for privacy-sensitive data exchange & monetization: @OceanProtocol

How to bring these two together, while creating a better and safer web experience for everyone (Web3)?

@trentmc0 would say: Use what's there (UWT). Let's look into this 👇

Following the paradigm (use what's there), you understand that time is also a factor.

So how to connect A) and B), and when?

Recent developments enabling the concept to be discussed:

• NFT hype = Broad, GenZ Crypto Adoption

• Metamask 🦊 as a browser = First true Web3 “user autonomy” wrapper

• NFTs as Login = On-chain Identities aka: PFP (compare: Twitter Blue)

• Ocean data NFT (V4) = Adding data ownership to NFTs

• Ocean datatoken (V3) = Buy or sell any subset of your data as a token

Connect these👇

It’s like how @sytaylor stated:

https://twitter.com/sytaylor/status/1514951487608209409

It is about the ID part, and it is also about the "algorithm" part.

Talking AI, we see: algos for system optimization. By existing Web2 behemoths, science, and Web3. Web2 rn has the most valuable data sets and biggest demand. Let's leverage this. But how 👇?

What you need:

I) Data as #dataNFT minted on Ocean Market, for privacy-preserving, incentivized data exchange

II) A "hook" for users to connect A) with B) seamlessly

III) Frictionless data consume and provide for dApps

IV) Actionable, contextual data to improve your UX (written by the platforms)

To get to this, one flavor of leveraging #OceanONDA (V4) would be:

1.) Mint data NFTs on Ocean Market for ur #PFPclub, like BAYC (ERC721✓, Opensea✓)

2.) Have them point to #datatoken on Ocean Market ✓

3.) Log into e.g. Twitter Blue w/ ur data NFT

4.) Twitter can read from your data sets, on your premise (accessed by buying your #datatoken w/ $OCEAN) to improve ur UX

5.) Twitter will write your new data bits to your data sets, through your #dataNFT, as they can receive royalties per consume of ur data (token) by other platforms

6.) Other platforms (Instagram, mirror.xyz, all #Web3 dApps) can read from your updated data sets, consuming them via $OCEAN #datatoken, upon login

7.) You set the new rules, you benefit, you give kickbacks, you protect your privacy, YOU chose and empower platforms from in Web3

In my old world, to get there, could have well been a 10y thing. In my new world, Web3, seeing the pace, it could be weeks or months.

Most components are there, few still need a bit of grind, also offering new ecosystem killer spots (compare: Uniswap, Opensea), but in general…

Welcome to the real utility of NFT:

A New Web3 DataEconomy 🌊👩‍🎤🧑‍🎤👨‍🎤🫂

To get real, or TL;DR, gimme the TECH:

Trent, Co-Founder of Ocean Protocol, assembled a brief technical readme to get you started on the vision/concept above, minting on Ocean Market (V4, coming out very soon) 👇

https://github.com/oceanprotocol/ocean.py/blob/v4main/READMEs/profile-nfts-flow.md

And of course, as what I described is only one of many potential use cases for Ocean data NFTs, a bit of a broader look at what’s possible with data NFT (storing atomic user data on chain, on data NFT) 👇

https://github.com/oceanprotocol/ocean.py/blob/v4main/READMEs/key-value-flow.md

If you are 🤷‍♂️ on the above, here’s a non-tech intro (data NFT, datatoken):

https://oceanprotocol.com/technology/data-nfts-and-data-tokens

If your dev colleagues are 🤷‍♂️ on this, here’s a gen readme:

https://github.com/oceanprotocol/ocean.py/blob/v4main/READMEs/data-nfts-and-datatokens-flow.md

We would love to see all this become a reality, and we believe that our work (or that of the teams, I am new) at Ocean of the past 2 years offers all of you the ideal end-to-end framework to get started with this today - and have your user base protect and monetize their data with Ocean Protocol.

If you got any questions, you know where to find us. 🌊✌️

When you spent endless hours customizing your avatar in a random multiplayer game w/ your friends, only to not even play in the end, that’s when you understand that #NFT #PFP are about way more than jpgs. It’s about identity. About pride. And about being yourself.

Ppl are smarter than we tend to believe. We will be living “in a simulation”. And ppl know that. In that simulation, you want to have a unique identity. One you are proud of. One that reflects your inner self.

The fun part starts here: While busy disrupting the entire (social) web in speed of light, #NFT #PFPs do something curious: They connect mainstream web2 to blockchain. After all.

At this point, Ocean’s focus on data x blockchain becomes interesting: How to manifest the value of your NFT, the universal log-in? Turn it into a universal key to your most valuable resource: data. It’s called: #dataNFT And it’s coming this quarter: @OceanProtocol V4

V4 is way more than dataNFT, , but it’s an intriguing part: Trent built http://ascribe.io in 2013 - on Bitcoin Lightning Network: “We had been asking the question: how do you collect digitally based artworks? Then we realized: what if you could own digital art the way you own Bitcoin?”

After having invented this for the world (NFT), bigger problems were at hand. Web2 stars not only started to stack people’s personal data, they started to use it, against the users, for the revenues. That’s how Ocean came to be. #OceanONDA (V4) now merges both inventions:

https://oceanprotocol.com/technology/data-nfts-and-data-tokens

My feeling is that from inception to mainstream, it might not take 7 years this time, like with NFT concept originally did. What I saw these past weeks, what I learned about how #web3 works from the inside, the combination of NFT tech and a #NewDataEconomy protocol might come in just at the right time.

Leaving you with a practical example (for now), to get a feel for picking your NFT PFP. Cause that’s how I got it after all:

https://twitter.com/CryptoWally2/status/1516617313541312519?s=20&t=y8r2jJzXgSuet5vrzsY3Rg

*Update (14.04.2022):

Off to new Shores 🌊

What was still missing in the “Converational Web”, what I called the** “human heart”,** or “synergy” between human communication skills and AI NLP, just like between sub-systems, is now realized conceptually.

Human-AI-Hybridization in Chat-Sevices (note: different from chatbots), just like multi-channel-translation of diverging feature sets, is live at:BeyondDialog GmbH / 42DS GmbH in Cologne.

Namely in the form of:- “Chat.OS”- “ConvAdapter”- and “Magenta Dialog 2022”

IPs / rights are no longer with me. Instead, they are with the companies mentioned above.

I’m off to new shores, realizing the dream of democratic software systems (Blockchain and Decentralization) and a #NewDataEconomy with equal access and fair compensation for all humans.

Find me in #Web3 at Ocean Protocol and OceanDAO. 👨‍🎤

*Update (18.11.2019):

How we got here 🧐

I left Deutsche Telekom two years ago, more than a year after I wrote this story originally. It was early 2016 and** Conversational Commerce was still in its infancy.** A crazy idea, scribbled into my Moleskine, about turning carrier messaging into an open, federated b2c platform for applications and businesses, hadn’t even started to take off. And it became something different and bigger than I expected. You might know it as “RCS Business Messaging” today.

In 2016, I wrote about working for a great company, also known as #Magenta, and about how I worked a few years to make a **moonshot concept **a reality. Which was made possible only thanks to my former team-lead and chairman of RCS at GSMA, Kobus Smit, and Petja Heimbach, at Deutsche Telekom who gave me the best backing and support imaginable.

Around the time of writing we started discussing to found a **GSMA task force called “ RCS Messaging as a Platform”, with colleagues from all over the world, from major carriers to other industry leaders, from Google to Huawei, **a group of few that managed to align and convince this formerly silo’ed industry to collaborate on an open conversational commerce platform, laying the groundwork for what is called RBM in short today.

The dream of RCS as basis to a global, federated, open ecosystem for conversational commerce & applications — as counter-model to Facebook and Amazon — came true. It’s worth billions today, with 100s of millions of daily active users and thousands of partners and businesses actively engaging today.

But not everything played out the way I planned. End of 2017, essentials were still missing when I left — to** enjoy life, **travel (go visit Costa Rica, it’s too beautiful) and further develop my concept outside one company.

Today, 2019, almost every major player in communication tech pushed into the space. AT&T, Verizon, China Mobile, all major european carriers, Samsung, Huawei and Google, huge messaging aggregators like Twilio or MessageBird joined the pack, just like Live Chat platforms like **LivePerson or **Zendesk started to compete for the number 1 in native messaging conversational commerce.

What is still missing

What is still missing from my original idea is: “synergy” and “the human heart”. You have to work in unity, in synergy, to pair Facebook (or Amazon in Voice, the next iteration of ConvComm). You must act as one platform in front of users and businesses alike and federate (cash and features) in the background. Instead, different groups sometimes still compete **within RCS. **Definitively some room for improvement (e.g. CCMI). But there’s another way in which synergy is missing. A more fundamental way.

When conceptualizing a new global platform, basically a new web iteration, you want something like** intermediality*, a different term for synergy. ****It’s *something from my field of studies, basically saying that new media iterations become dominant by merging aspects of former media iterations into oneselves, adding a new interaction paradigm to it and becoming something new and globally dominant by it.

The mobile web sucked in and shrunk the content of the www, the social web (Facebook, Instagram) sucked in and redistributed website content from the www and produser media from the mobile web (photos & videos), added their very own, unique interaction mode (“many to many”) and evolved into a brand new “web” after time.

So where is the structural synergy in Conversational Commerce? It’s not just about a new interface. It’s about a new interaction paradigm, one where all** former iterations** are incorporated into and serve to foster and help create it. Yes, cards and “roulettes” incorporate content from the www, businesses can send and receive photos and videos (mobile web). But where is the social (human to human), its incorporation, the serving of the former iterations and the truly new paradigm?

The “human” in Conversations

It’s “conversations” we are talking about. Something deeply, truly human. And I don’t see it realized as unique, new paradigm in Conversational Commerce yet. It’s not just about copying whatsapp chats, throwing cards and videos in and adding AI.

It’s about taking all of these, but make them serve to create a new “genre” of interaction . For Conversational Commerce, the b-party of conversations cannot just be a “business”, shooting out AI-managed messages, it’s supposed to be a human conversation, which is about much more than text and multimedia: empathy, individual speed, charm, memories and character, about a way to give human conversations with all its aspects an own, new “mode” of content distribution, on behalf of businesses in case of Conversational Commerce.

Which brings me to the second aspect I still see missing: “the human heart”. There is no human heart in the architecture of RBM today on both sides of the channel.

Even after I long left the space,** **this “human heart”, still missing, got stuck in my head. It stuck because that’s why I created the concept that lead to RBM in the first place. To create an ecosystem, a new business architecture to counter-hack central platforms like Facebook, to ensure a valued, valuabe and **sustainable spot for humans **in the **“Conversational Web”, as **I would call it today. And the economy it is about to shape.

So why is the crucial role of humans missing in most initiatives around Conversational Commerce today? Why the rigid focus on AI and Chatbots? Because humans don’t “scale” as fast as AI. They don’t make billions of dollars fast. What’s worth fast billions: AI. AI by Google, AI by Samsung, by Apple, by Salesforce, by LivePerson and so on. Everyone has their AI strategy, replacing humans in the Service Sector via Conversational Commerce and making great money with this promise. Just like Amazon replaces local stores run by humans.

The Current

Same applies to the group of huge brands targeted as customers: every player in the Conversational Commerce ecosystem is going after them: Lufthansa, Santander, Hyatt, Nike, L’Oreal, these kind of kids. They have seven or eight digit marketing or customer relationship budgets— and they are ready to spend it to optimize, hence get cheaper customer service and sell their global products with less cost. Which is promised by AI today.

We create a problem we will only see in full effect in a decade or two. The “human heart” and by that the **“human paradigm” **is missing. But it doesn’t work without it. Not ethically, but also not structurally, which is why we are stuck with what we have today: primary-school-smart chatbots and annoyed humans.

The Opportunity

Only with humans at the **architecture’s core **on both sides of the new medium, in a solution that helps humans shape the medium and scales at the same time, we can create a truly conversational web.

The right tools, the motivation and the right interaction mode: human, yet globally present, with the effect of a positive economic vision, is to be “invented” on the b-side. That’s why Conversational Commerce is a **giant buzz **and billion dollar ecosystem, but 80%+of users are still sticking to websites and apps. And that’s where I personally find true beauty: where media theory meets a giant business challenge meets ethics:

7 years ago, I sensed Facebook and Amazon trying to bypass mobile operating systems, add AI, occupy the value chain with it, suck almost all revenue out of local, regional or national economies to finally leave millions of humans and their way to make a living behind. Not cool.

I wanted Conversational Commerce to be a safe haven “post mobile”, “post www”, for a more human economy, where every human in any company can make a difference, not the best bot or AI. To strengthen the service sector as employment field in a time where most others will be replaced by robotics and AI. Why didn’t it happen yet?

Way to go

I guess because it’s hard. The platform’s story, its ethics, its mechanics, the software, the way to interact, how content generated, shared, and used, the business models behind it, the APIs and companies involved, the interfaces and the ecosystem-embeddedment all have to work together seamlessly like one, always with the “human factor” at its conceptual core.

It’s actually the real challenge when creating a new web iteration: the unique in the mode. It’s also the 70% of my concept I couldn’t get through. That’s why I left. And stayed away.

Until a few people changed my mind. Next to family and friends it was Bianca Löwemann, global partner manager for RBM at Telekom today and my former partner in crime when evangelizing on ConvComm back in the day.

I met her lately in a small café and she convinced me to revisit the topic. She said that a) the time is right just now and b) that realizing such a concept would actually be more probable outside a corporate.

Still wondering if it would get adopted, I thought: why not give it shot. Got back to my original concept and iterated it into something new, small, yet beautiful, turning Conversational Commerce into what it was supposed in the first place — at least for me.

—

Original Post (24.04.2016):

Conversational Commerce

The basic idea: Everyone uses Chat-Messengers all the time. And where there are tons of users, there will be businesses.

The bet goes: “Chat Conversation” is a great new way for businesses to interact with customers and vice versa.

Hence: many great ideas, messengers with existing platforms (Telegram, Slack, WeChat) & some major – as in industry-changing-major – releases this year: Facebook Messenger, Google Allo, iMessage Kit & Skype.

The hype could well end up making messengers as powerful as the existing e-commerce infrastructure. To catch up on the topic from the beginning, I recommend to read Messina’s great piece on “conversational commerce” that kinda kicked off the real buzz earlier this year.

An idea I just couldn’t let go of

Back in 2010 my focus at university was on applications inside messaging. I believed so hard that chat was about to become way much more than “just chatting”.

My hypothesis: interaction pivots have always been where 3rd party applications & new commercial ecosystems grew. New pivots developed due to social patterns. Messaging mapped personal relations perfectly. Ergo: Messaging was the next potential major pivot.

The hypothesis made up for both my final thesis at university and a startup concept: A messaging app that allowed for collaborative usage of 3rd party web services inside chat.

While the thesis helped me finish my degree and scored me my first job, the startup founding efforts did not quite work out that well. German investors in 2011 were neither willing to take the risk of investing in a new social concept, nor did they believe in messaging apps as a future dominant medium.

I just had to

2 years later, when I started working at Deutsche Telekom, the topic of “monetization in messaging” came to my door. The question: “Where does the money come from if messaging as such will be free of charge?”

After many discussions, I was tasked to build a prototype around my concept.

I picked a small app agency startup — whose CEO I happened to know from desk sharing at my former startup job — to craft this app prototype with me:

A messenger app called “Smile” (I know, cheezy, but it made everyone smile using it) including webapps you could use from inside chats and group chats of your messenger — updating in realtime. It was like a steroid injection for “the mobile web” straight from the messenger.

These little In-Chat-Apps (Chapps) ran completely inside the messaging app, full screen displayed via an In-App-Browser.

We managed to connect web-services to all relevant features (device APIs) of the phone like accelerator, microphone, ID, etc. — through the messenger.

Believe it or not: in 2013 that was a big deal.

On UX side, the plan was

• to make collaborative decisions easier & more fun (rock-paper-scissors, pulling matches, creating a quick poll on where to spend friday night)

• to make everyday life easier (shopping lists, task lists, polls, etc. in chats)

• **to bring commerce into messaging **(chatting with businesses, voting on dresses with friends, buying gifts together, mutually booking flights & hotels, etc.)

On strategy side I wanted to fix certain aspects in current 3rd party platforms (aka. app stores):

• **lower the hurdle for users to use apps together **(install @ all parties)

• instant access to app history from chats

• **lower the hurdle for developers to build and deploy services **(html5 / webapps)

But: Since you never heard of “Smile” and won’t find a trace of it on the web, you can imagine what happened almost 3 years ago: it went straight to the corporate drawer.

Changing a corporate's core

The project I worked on was called RCS. The “planned to be” successor of SMS.

The focus of RCS back then wasn’t on conquering the future web with a new 3rd party platform. It was rebuilding SMS, agreeing on and deploying the new messaging protocol. With every carrier and every smartphone crafter out there.

It is like convincing all carmakers on the planet to agree on one common electronic battery — and stop charging for current cars at the same time.

Let’s not get into further details of RCS. There were slowing factors, most driven by the legacy of carrier messaging, regulators, data privacy and the federated structure of the carrier landscape. Until recent cloud offers by Jibe or SAP came out.

A hidden upside — on the long run

Coming from small startups I had a hard time seeing value in a standard driven carrier messaging protocol for a long time.

But analysing digital global ecosystems and the role of messaging over the past 3 years, I found it: Neutrality.

How else could players like Google, Apple or Microsoft (or Amazon, longer story) ever connect their walled-gardens without losing face?

An initiative like an SMS follow-up-technology, federated between all carriers, holds this value.

SMS did that for years. Connecting OS’s. Creating a neutral messaging web would fix the problem of global messaging lying in the hand of 1 single, private entity like FB or WeChat.

Every startup, every company on this planet can use SMS today and plug into APIs to do so. RCS will be the same. So goes the plan.

Facebook started shutting out startups, bots and aggregators from its platform already. Naming only a few selected partners at F8 ‘16.

Telegram and Slack are different: they are open. Anybody can build and deploy bots/services.

But: if adressability (what is called “reach” in the carrier world) is crucial to Conversational Commerce, will those services ever stand a chance?

Maybe they will. Or they use RCS one day for global reach — like iMessage with SMS. Google did bet on RCS last fall, announcing Android integration earlier this year.

If there is a need for an open, globally governed chat messaging that any company can use, it might be worth waiting for carriers and this new messaging protocol with the weird name.

Even though never launched, it helped

Our prototype, even though never launched, brought a feel for platform mechanics, the value of apps, seemless UX & UI beauty to our teams at Telekom.

The startup partner I built the prototype with was acquired by Trivago a year later. The best app team I have ever got to work with was gone for good. Highlights:

• Whatever. I told the CTO and the Technical Project Manager of the startup what I imagined and conceptualized. It contained at least 5 features, hooks & connections of app-elements that had never been built before. Me: “I would really love the app to do this and this and that, but I know it’s not possible.” His answer: “Go on. Tell us whatever you think is best - and we will make it work.” If you ever want to create something truly unique, look for people with that kind of attitude.

• Speed & Quality via Respect. From the time the wireframes, features and user stories (if unfamiliar: the software concept) were set, it took the team of eight only 3 months to build the app. 3 months. A live-ready iOS Application (store, 3rd party webapps, access to all big device APIs, great design). I think this was only possible thx to the 2 founders being real A-Players. And nice guys. Who gathered even more A-Players & the best team-members around them. They respected every one 100%. And the developers respected them back, just like the designers and the project manager (and vice versa). For their talent and dedication. Just like they respected my concept. And I loved everyone of them. Something that will keep on inspiring me for the rest of my career. Like the 19y old senior developer Giulio who dropped out of university after tutoring his professor on iOS Development for the first 6 months. Rheinfabrik saw this raw talent and hired him immediately. The whole team’s dedication, guts and creativity still impresses me when looking back. Everyone just tried to make the next persons work better with their own work.

The power of Conversational Commerce

After 3 years I still think that using the web layer is one smart strategy on the way to a global messaging platform. For its openness.

That’s why I think WeChat did a brillant job. (I see more elements/aspects/features now, but can’t share).

Especially openness is a job that Facebook did not manage to pair yet. Actually: I think Facebook does not want to pair this.

IMHO Facebook wants any provider of content or commerce to use as many Facebook-exclusive features as possible.

Cause the more you depend on proprietary elements of a platform like Facebook, the harder it will be to move on (and of course: the less revenue you will get).

Like it went down with the App Store: 30% cut. No alternatives. Except Android, but with similar shares.

The Facebook Messaging Web

Facebook is building this App Store 2.0 Ecosystem around Messaging today — and much more. With chances for a monopole in both Communications and Commerce.

An ecosystem that is more closed and more complete than any other before: Google (Play Store, Search, Chrome, Ads, Payment…) or Apple’s (App Store, iCloud, Apple TV, CarPlay, Apple Pay…) or Amazon (Commerce, Prime, Instant Video, Music, (future) Logistics,…)

Examples:

• **Facebook App Newsfeed **(Replacing Ads: Major Distribution / Display Channel linkable to every other point in the Facebook world)

• Facebook App Search (Replacing Search & Phone Number: Discover pretty much any big, medium, large business in the world — as well as any event, article or person)

• Instant Articles (Replacing Ads & Browser by stripping news articles naked from non-facebook-ads and making them only displayable via Facebook)

• Atlas (Replacing Ads: Advertisement Network similar to Google Ads with the Kicker of Like-Buttons on almost any page on the web “reporting” back to Facebook)

• Facebook Pages (Replacing online directories & Google Places: 50Mio Businesses on Facebook today)

• Facebook Messenger (Replacing Communication: Free Chat, Voice Calls, Group Calls and Video Calls)

• Facebook Businesses on Messenger (Replacing all B2C: Chatbots instead of Apps, Live Chat Support instead of B2C Calls, Email & Support, Sponsored Messages replacing Marketing Tools & Ads,…)

• Apps on Messenger (Replacing App Stores & Mobile OS: A new store for collaborative/content apps & quicker access to existing apps on your phone — like Spotify, Flipboard…)

• **Messenger Payment **(Replacing Banking: long shot)

• Free Internet Access (Replacing internet access: Internet.org, Terragraph, ARIES)

• Instagram (Replacing magazine ads: Globally trending image/aesthetics-based marketing platform)

• Whatsapp (Replacing Competition)

If you connect the dots, you can see how a power-position like no other is growing here.

Almost unmatchable by any other single digital player — no matter how big.

Facebook merges dominance in future Search, Ads, Communications, Apps, Social, Commerce, Marketing and Payment under one umbrella.

I am not saying Facebook is evil, or more evil than Google, AT&T, Tencent, Telekom, Apple, Amazon or Microsoft. But at least I am naming several here, not one.

Owning the Web like no other before

To match a future messaging web with all elements “dotted” above, a global communication network, governed and accessible in a federated way, might help.

With a distributed, diverse ecosystem growing around it.

There are many great startups around in this new messaging web space already (Userlike, Orat.io, Letsclap, just to name a few) — and amazing new opportunities we haven’t even figured out yet. Just because existing messengers are closed systems.

How all of this will play out, what role global software/cloud players, hardware players, carriers, publishers and startups can play, we’ll see.

A carrier messaging standard capable of more than just SMS sure is not the sexiest option. But it is one. Though, like with everything web & tech: we can’t tell, we can only try & see.

The biggest players in the ‘game of net’ will have the sh*t disrupted out of them soon (and haven’t fully understood it yet).

These players — together with new & brave startups — will have to step up and collaborate at a certain point — or we might face a branded, single-point-of-control web like we have never seen before.

Let’s not f*ck it up.

Note: The opinions expressed here are purely my own and do not reflect that of my employer.

Some time ago I found a new startup that shipped well designed glasses for really little money — including almost free “vision glasses”. I always hated to stand around in Optician Stores, discussing on design and fit endlessly, trying on pair after pair after pair and most of all: Paying 400 crazy bucks for a piece of plastic in my face.

Long story short I ordered these glasses online for literally 120 bucks. After seemless & free home-try-on shipped, some ugly charm-snitching of my vision stats from my local Optician was done and 1 week of waiting, I finally got my new glasses and I loved them. For 1/3 the price. I wondered: just how do they manage to offer something that good that cheap?

You can probably guess the moral of this story. And I guess it’s the 1000th one on the impact of digital disruption on existing markets:

Ra, ra, ra, no more business for local opticians, cheaper glasses, happy customers, all good. About local stores you could say: adapt (prices) or die. Which is valid in most cases.

Still disruption became very…human to me this time. Walking around with my fancy new, cheap glasses I realized: those little fucks kept slipping from my nose all the time. Without thinking about it I entered the optician (where I got the stats from & where used to buy my glasses before) after a long day of work. I checked out some pairs of sunglasses and asked the optician lady if she could fix the hold of my cuttend glasses in the meantime (for the non-half-blind: always a free no brainer service even between different otpician’s before).

Before taking my glasses she stopped, looked at me and said (truly nice and decent lady usually): “Alright, you get your vision stats here and go buy your glasses including vision adaption online — but I’m good enough to fix the hold for free now?” She still smiled, but her face has turned pitch red.

Point being: the startup that was selling the new glasses to me did a perfect job so far. And also: 400 bucks for glasses seems way too much if you could get them for 120. Still it is destroying this girls job, profession and love: selling glasses and finding the perfect pair for everyone — helping people to see better and look great. She had a traineeship for three years, she said, working hard ever since.

For me, working in tech for many years, the consequences of digital disruption are clear like water. I calculate them in any concept I build, in any strategy I outline. Actually: the higher the level of disruption and scale, the bigger the profit for my employer will be (and soon hopefully for myself) and the better of a job I did.

Still when disruption stood right in front of me, red face, angry, sad, still liking me, smiling at me and I remembered the 100 times we smiled at each other passing by in our quarter after work — it knocked me off my feed.

I got my glasses’ hold fixed, left 20 bucks on the table secretly, slipped out the door and felt really bad.

The lesson it taught me: I spent all my time, used all my power and thoughts over the past decade to create concepts, strategies and startups that shot for the maximum amount of disruption, conquering markets, creating new startups and promising maximum scale. Except for one startup I worked at that actually sold “real life experiences” like dancing lessons, tourist tours, etc. locally with minimum revenue share — giving real people real new (small) jobs. And I hated how it did not scale enough.

Maybe, instead, I, we, should focus more & use our powers more to build startups, strategies, concepts & platforms that help existing, local businesses to adept to and survive in & be successful in the digital transformation. Instead of building new companies or departments that cut out the middle men, conquer it all and scale to the max.

Staying in the example: to help that nice optician lady sell her glasses at better prices and stay in touch with her local customers via new, digital channels and support them with their styles and vision – like a digital assistant would.

Maybe — talking personally — also having way more patience with tech departments struggling to perform digital transitions in the companies I work(ed) in.

I am currently working on the topic of messaging and conversational commerce. I thought about integrating local businesses, giving them an authentic support and contact tool to their local customers many times before.

But it was always prio C to me, a low long tail effect with low ROI. It just didn’t scale enough. I think, maybe, this priority is about to change.

…and helping creatives to come up with use cases / services for ordinary end users beyond payment.

Where is this coming from?

I used to participate in creating centralized e-commerce and communication platforms (last one in cooperation with GSMA & Google) and I loved doing it.

Centralization has always been one of the biggest hazards to natively working and flourishing future digital economic systems to me, down from the very global structure to every single participant. But fair and transparent future platforms by and with the current global players is what we need to not seriously get under the wheels of globalization soon. Wheels where UBI would remain as our last and not really ethical “Soma” resort to keep people silent and away from grabbing their pitchforks. At least I thought so. Then I started digging into blockchain.

Many people from my current industry are afraid of wrapping their head around the concept of blockchain right now as it seems too complex, mathematical or plain weird to them. Others argue it will replace the current web as a whole. Both sides keep saying pretty much the same about a potential, future mass adoption trigger.

Options for mass adoption

For it to happen, we would need:

A) (Equally replacing e.g. Amazon or Google) + (technical & philosophical understanding of the new tech by the average user) = (user switching to decentralized platform) or

b) (a better alternative with direct benefits) + (a simple metaphor making the upsides of a decentralized platform transparent to the average user) = switching

And I believe the same. We will not be able to make users switch back to a decentralized structure from centralized, digital platforms without A) or B). (Yes, back, cause the analog world with all its “Bodegas” or “Tante Emma Laeden (German Bodegas)” was very much decentralized in its economic construct from semantic/logic perspective)

A) appears kinda improbable since people are pretty lazy. Not in a negative way, rather always taking the route of the least resistance as in: Amazon Prime = cheapest offer + fastest delivery. It’s human nature (and part of Amazon’s success in this case).

So looking at B), I thought: there must be a hack, a trick. There must be a metaphor for regular people to understand the upsides and the true potential of blockchain. So, for B) to work, an intuitively graspable real upside ending up in a clear metaphor for everyone to understand would be of real help.

“TrustLESS”, which is often used for this purpose today, still seems a bit too intellectual for the average user to understand in my eyes and from my experience.

German “Verbindlichkeit” as a metaphor for future blockchain benefits

There is a german term though that I like (and recently used) for the job at hand. It is called: “Verbindlichkeit”. (Feel free to google-translate it — I had a hard time translating it 1:1).

It is basically like if a friend or colleague telling you you will meet next Tuesday or that she will definitely deliver the item back to you by a certain date/time and you get the vibe that you can be a hundred percent sure she will do so (or that you will meet). That’s “Verbindlichkeit” and that’s how I love to think about future blockchain use cases and the vibe coming along with it.

Examples of “Verbindlichkeit” as label when creating “killer” use cases for blockchain

Think: I want to make my **food delivery order **VERBINDLICH (Food delivery via bikes is currently scaling and a big thing in DE, e.g. by Foodora or Deliveroo). But, today it sucks. In many ways. Food arriving too late, poorly cooked, cold or was rejected by the restaurant 1h after you expected your order at your door. No transparency, no “Verbindlichkeit”.

So, what I will do now is: I will virtually (concept work) attach a blockchain payment and a “smart contract” (term to be widened for this purpose) to my food order. By smart contract in this case I mean: conditions. Together with a new label in the app like “VERBINDLICH”.

What it means is: I pay the full amount for my food (maybe plus 10% for additional incentivation in case EVERYTHING goes premium) and attach conditions to it to be fulfilled. During the cooking and delivery process, whenever a part of the task is fulfilled to my complete satisfaction, a virtual checkmark is set within the smart contract triggering a partly payout to my counterpart on the platform, in this case the rider or the restaurant.

Those events could be:

1.) kitchen finishes my food in time (checkmark by kitchen and rider)

2.) rider delivers my food in time (checkmark by rider and me)

3.) food is warm (checkmark by me)

4.) food does not taste bad (checkmark by me)

5.) LOVED the food (checkmark by me -> additional 10% released)

If all checkmarks are made, the rider and the kitchen each get their full amount paid (plus 10% eventually). If anything is not to my satisfaction, the payout to the kitchen or the rider gets reduced respectively. I only pay for what I truly receive and rider and kitchen are incentivized to work at their best.

Now: Of course there are a ton insufficiencies in this very simple, early stage example. A friend asked me: “Why should a restaurant accept this kind of pressure?” Or: “What if the rider hits a brick on the road, what if the kitchen is overbooked? What if restaurants reject the concept in general?” Of course.** We will need additions to the system to fix these insufficiencies** and incentivize both sides of such a future platform. I could give you my ideas right now (10% plus payment to the restaurant for amazing taste is a very simple one, blocking me from ordering from a certain restaurant for a certain time in case I repeatedly did not check “food tastes good” to lower the price but keep on ordering from them), but this is just a post, not a paper or whitepaper so we’ll leave this one be. It’s not the point right now and it will sure be solved in the future. It’s part of the creative process, of the challenge, of the fun. ;)

The point here is much rather the introduction of “Verbindlichkeit” as a concept or label for future functionality and by that: potential mass adoption.

In this very food delivery example, blockchain can end the times of blindly “paypaling” some money somewhere and just hoping to get warm, good & timely food in return, replacing it with transparency, quality guarantee and a certain level of control by the enduse.

***A user would be able to get a “verbindlich” guarantee in advance to either receive exactly WHAT he*she paid for by WHEN he*she ordered it ***(even without experience with the order service) OR to get her*his money back.

Other examples, clarifying on the label idea

“Pfandsysteme” (we have to pay 25c extra with every lemonade or water bottle to make “sure” it is recycled properly in Germany) would be another, maybe boring, but important and intriguing hack-object for the “Verbindlichkeit”-system-paradigm. When I pay 25c extra for a bottle, the system in the background (blockchain) could make sure that at some point this bottle will really be recycled properly and I get the value I paid in the beginning — indicated by a “verbindlich” label on the bottle.

**Amazon-Style-E-Commerce **would be a bigger example. With blockchain, I could attach “verbindlich” rules to my payment. Of course convenience-related ones like “delivery in time” or fair return policies, but ALSO, and that is my point, conditions that users personally care about individually, like: “I want my postman to be paid properly”, “I want him to drive an electric car for my delivery” or even: “I want this shirt not to be produced by a poor child in India but either in the US or by a well paid grown up in India”. Checkmark, checkmark, money payout, everything is “verbindlich”, if you remember my explanation above.

The user benefit

So what’s new in this concept of a “Verbindlichkeit” label? **The USER could actually be sure of (and even set) HER*HIS conditions to be fulfilled during a purchase **and does no longer have to accept the decisions & rules made & set by a central platform player (like Amazon) just to profit from its upsides. He*She would get e.g. the delivery by his*her own terms — and: “VERBINDLICH”.

—

Thanks for reading. Probably you will make much better and smarter on-point derivations in the future, maybe you will create the “iPhone moment” for blockchain yourself. Maybe “Verbindlichkeit” as a concept can help you do so.

Conversational Commerce

The basic idea goes: Everyone uses Chat-Messengers. It is the dominant medium today.

The money bet goes: “(Chat) Conversation” is a great new way for businesses to interact with customers in a million ways. Creating a great platform and — if used dominantly — a new web over time.

Many great ideas from startups have been seen, messengers added platforms (Kik, Telegram, Slack, Skype, WeChat) & one player tries to own it all: Facebook.

To catch up on the topic, I recommend to read Messina’s great piece on messaging as a platform from January. It nails the potential — and names it: Conversational Commerce aka. #ConvComm. Plus the tons of articles explaining how messaging is evolving to become *the* platform aka. the next web: with Chatbots, Live Chat, AI, etc.

I want to take a different perspective. A shot at explaining what this development might mean on global basis. How it will change the balance of the global ecosystem and how there might be an unexpected alternative.

The bumpy road to a connector

The project I have been working on for the past 3 years at Deutsche Telekom is called RCS. The new SMS, if you will. And it was as much pain as it carries potential today — unrecognized so far.

A recap:

RCS started 6 years ago as an alternative app to Whatsapp by carriers. It failed first try. After that, we changed it to become the successor of SMS. As new global messaging standard.

For quite a while the focus of RCS has been on rebuilding the federated global SMS structure with better features, agreeing on and deploying the new messaging protocol with every carrier out there.

It was like convincing all carmakers on the planet to agree on one electronic battery — and stop charging for current cars same time.

Quite a pain as said, until recently big cloud players like Google or SAP saw the potential and jumped the ship. Creating solutions for carriers to deploy RCS with less time & cost.

“Standard” still sounds pretty unsexy to me as a Startup Guy — even after 3 years at Telekom.

But it has unpairable upsides: Neutrality and Openness.

When I started to realize this, I began to fight for it like crazy. A perspective I would like to outline to you. Allow me to use this metaphor — because it works and because I love Star Trek:

To create a “United Federation of (Messaging) Planets”.

“United Federation of (Messaging) Planets”

There is this one thing about SMS that differentiates it from all other messengers: it is neutral.

SMS was never owned by one company, not even by 10. Almost like http. It is a global standard, open to any Company via APIs, governed by many, many carriers bound to national laws, not to one CEO. Now by adding messenger features, it can live up to its future potential.

For the first time Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon (and new players to come and rise) can connect their walled-gardens and next ecosystems around messaging without losing face.

Something SMS did for years: Connecting all users and OS’s. But it was lacking most current messenger features. The idea occurring at a certain point: Creating a federated, “global messaging web” with full feature set & access for anyone. For an open messaging web.

Every startup, every company on this planet can use SMS today and plug into APIs to do so. RCS will stay the same.

Facebook on the other hand started to leverage its power position already and shut out “un-selected” startups, bots and aggregators from its platform.

Telegram and Slack are different and a great starting point: they are open. Anyone can build and deploy bots & services.

But: if global adressability (what we call “reach”) is crucial for a “messaging web”, will those messengers ever stand a chance?

Maybe they will. Or they use RCS one day — like iMessage does with SMS. Google did bet on RCS last fall buying Jibe Mobile, announcing default Android integration lately.

The Facebook Messaging Web

Facebook is building a huge Ecosystem around Messaging right now. With the biggest chance ever for a monopole in future Communications, Commerce and Internet Access.

An ecosystem that is more closed and more complete than any other before: Google (Play Store, Search, Chrome, Ads, Payment…) or Apple (App Store, iCloud, Apple TV, CarPlay, Apple Pay…) or Amazon (Commerce, Prime, Instant Video, Music, (future) Logistics,…)

A glimpse at the elements:

Facebook Newsfeed (Replacing Browser and Ads)

Facebook Search (Replacing Search & Phone Number in terms of discovering people and businesses)

Instant Articles (Replacing Newspapers & Ads)

Atlas (Replacing Google Ads)

Facebook Pages (Replacing commercial websites & Google Places: 50Mio Businesses on Facebook today)

**Facebook Messenger **(Replacing Communication: Free Chat, Voice Calls, Group Calls and Video Calls)

Facebook Businesses on Messenger (Replacing all B2C: Chatbots instead of Apps, Live Chat instead of Calls, Email or Support, Sponsored Messages instead of Marketing Tools,…)

**Apps on Messenger **(Replacing App Stores & Mobile OS)

Messenger Payment (Replacing Banking potentially)

**Internet **(Replacing internet access: Internet.org, Terragraph, ARIES)

Instagram (Replacing magazines & magazine ads)

Whatsapp (Replacing Competition)

If you connect the dots, you can see how** a power-position like no other is growing here.**

Unmatchable by any other single digital player — no matter how big.

Facebook merges dominance in future Search, Ads, Communications, Apps, Social, Commerce, Marketing and Payment under one umbrella.

A “new web” needs diversity

To match a future messaging web with all elements of Facebook described above, a global communication network, governed in a federated way, is needed.

As basis for and to foster a distributed, diverse global ecosystem growing around it.

There are many great startups around in this new messaging web space already (Userlike, Orat.io, Letsclap, just to name a few) — and amazing new opportunities we couldn’t even figure out yet. Because the current dominant messaging platform is such a closed system.

What exact roles global software/cloud players, hardware players, carriers, publishers and startups will play, has to be found out. A basis at least is set.

Don’t get me wrong: I am not saying a carrier standard is the only way to accomplish an open messaging web in 2016. Not even the best one, I guess (lack of speed; federated decisions). The point is the existence of a future open basic common denominator that can be utilized. Where more agile players (big and small) can grow more enhanced systems upon.

Other than in a “Facebook-only Messaging Web” there is enough room for all players to innovate, grow, benefit, create new services and — of course — generate revenues.

The big and small players, the corporates and the startups, have a chance to collaborate openly (while still acting independently) — to not face a branded, single-point-of-control messaging web like we might be headed to right now.

That said: Live long and prosper. 🖖

**Note: **The opinions expressed here are purely my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.