I’m convinced that the next wave is around taking the data that’s all around us, using machines to analyze it, and selling it back to the very people who created it in a way that gives them more value.

Recently came across the true KnowItAll’s who are working at the U of Washington. This group also is associated with some of the best next-wave thinking around how to pull off this type of endeavor.

So a shout out to Jason Maynard from Credit Suisse (who launched their OnDemand Index, and whom I think is one of the few analysts who really do have a good feel for what’s going on out there) with whom I had the conversation around creating or finding a company that took customer data from other OnDemand vendors, anonymized, aggregated, and analyzed it, then sold it back to those very customers.

The example: you get a SaaS company that has all kinds of information around their customers’ businesses: for instance how much sales pipeline per rep x y and z companies have. They ask their customers to opt-in for this service in exchange for their data being imported into the model. 50 customers sign up, and then you can tell all 50 how their pipeline per rep is compared to their peers.

There would be objections around privacy, but I think the KnowItAll’s have a solution for that, dating back to 2001!

What would make this even more interesting is to produce a taxonomy, or to allow the community to produce a taxonomy via open source methods, in order to take it further, and then to go across other companies.

So – if you’re out there reading this and know of a company that does this or wants to, drop me a line because I want to join that company!!!

IBM, Novell, and Parity Communications are talking about blind encryption to allow internet surfers to anonymously visit, and indeed transact with sites.

Of course, their project is the right thing to do, in terms of privacy, security, and in keeping the status quo.

Now – the “status quo” statement above should make you think. Isn’t that changing the “status quo?”

Before the digital tech era, the “web” era (so let’s say 10 years ago for the average person) people couldn’t effectively track all of your purchases, what you looked at, where you went and what you were interested in, and then target you with advertisements.

Anonymity was the status quo.

Now – let’s consider why this effort is doomed in terms of commercial success. Even a nascent system, such as e-commerce over the web, has built up powerful interests and requires a somewhat stable transactional model. Today we know the game: You come to my site, I track you and entice you to disclose, I advertise to you, and then I sell you something (eventually).

If I can’t track you, and can’t profile you, and don’t know what you bought, and actually am thwarted from developing ideas about you, then my model is in trouble.

No web merchants are going to participate in transactions with this type of system voluntarily, and most will oppose it if necessary.

So success for this effort demands massive demand for incremental privacy from people like you and me, which history has shown virtually never happens — not for privacy or any other perceived incremental advancement.

There are a bunch of caveats, and there are ways that this could work, and I would love for that to happen.

But I’m not waiting around.