Is Social MDM Going the Wrong Way?

Is Social MDM Going the Wrong Way?

Jun 27, 2012 by in Master Data Management

My three previous posts have examined Social MDM – the integration of social media data into master data management (MDM) – including its three biggest challenges (Identity, Relevancy, and Privacy),its perceived customer value proposition, and my last post highlighted some of the excellent commentary that this series has received.

In this post, I want to revisit a concept that I blogged about way back in March 2010 in my post on The Semantic Future of MDM. Organizations are spending a lot of time and money attempting to manage data they do not own – the data that describes YOU, which organizations claim ownership of on the basis that you are their customer. This is the fundamental flaw of Customer MDM – customers, who are the true owners of their own master data, are not allowed, by the companies they do business with, to establish ownership over their own master data.

And it’s not just your master data – it’s also your transaction data, which reveal a lot about you, not just as a consumer, but also as a patient and a voter. And it’s not just the companies you directly do business with that are part of this problem. In her New York Times article You for Sale: Mapping, and Sharing, the Consumer Genome, which focuses on the database marketing company Acxiom, Natasha Singer wrote about “the rapid expansion of an industry whose players often collect and sell sensitive financial and health information yet are nearly invisible to the public. In essence, it’s as if the ore of our data-driven lives were being mined, refined, and sold to the highest bidder, usually without our knowledge – by companies that most people rarely even know exist.”

In his InfoWorld article The next consumerization revolution: Your personal data, Galen Gruman stated “the truth is the product is you – all that data about you used to target ads and sales pitches. It’s hardly a new business model – it’s how trade publications have made their money for decades – but in the online world all that information is easily stolen, traded, and spread. Right now, users give away valuable information about themselves, but I fully expect to see services pop up that act as personal data brokers, giving users a cut of the money made from their personal information – the data users explicitly choose to share, not what is gathered about them sneakily. Again, this business model has long existed, but not in a way that allows individuals to participate in the proceeds.”

“As you can tell,” Gruman continued,”I don’t see the personal privacy issue the same way the advocacy groups do. The information is out there and will stay out there – the very act of digitization means the data is easily shared, manipulated, and used. That genie can’t return to the bottle as the privacy groups demand. Instead, I see the issue as a business proposition. If the data has value – and we know it does – its creators (you and me) should be paid for it. And if we take over the selling of our data, all those companies using it now have to respect us and abide by our standards. Currently, we’re a free resource to mine whether we like it or not.”

Is Social MDM going the Wrong Way?

Social MDM is about the integration of social media data into MDM implementations, especially social media’s treasure trove of customer data. But instead of trying to get social media data about customers into MDM, I think we need to get the existing data about customers out of MDM and into a personal data locker where customers can manage their own data, protect its privacy, and share it or sell it as they see fit.

Therefore, I believe that Social MDM is going the wrong way.

Now, of course, the real Single Version of the Truth is that too much money is being made by too many companies (both data management vendors and their clients) off of the perpetuation of the fundamental flaw of Customer MDM for such a seismic paradigm shift to occur anytime soon. The Status Quo will always Fight the Future. And so, for the foreseeable future at least, we will have to accept the sad fact that we will not be allowed to own our own data.

What Say You?

What are your opinions about the challenges and opportunities associated with Social MDM?

Please join the discussion by posting a comment below.

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5 Responses to “Is Social MDM Going the Wrong Way?”

  1. Loop Withers

    Jun 27, 2012

    Jim, your post tears me apart. Whereas I agree with you – essentially I share your vision and views on MDM and personal data – I want to raise two points that I believe are pertinent to your thread on MDM.

    1) The “I, Spartacus” Syndrome.
    I have manipulated my own online data very successfully over the last two years as a defensive response to Data Harvesting firms. I have done this quite legally (and ‘respectably’ if you like) by intentionally setting false data trails so that I can monitor the results.

    My findings are fascinating. Harvested data is often wildly inaccurate and businesses who buy it and onward-process it are often turning fiction into fact by further believing in the provenance of that core data. The data is believed to be accurate when it often is not.

    If MDM is liberally laced with fiction, it becomes devalued in an instant. If that data becomes embedded into the MDM core, it can almost never be corrected.

    If we take the view that both vendors and purchasers of harvested personal data wish it to be truthful for their own self-serving goals, then a huge ‘fraud’ or – at the very least – self-perpetuating fiction is being carried out.

    I believe that it is right to question the integrity and accuracy of core data and that Harvested Data should therefore be viewed as suspect and possibly a libel unless it is verified personally by the individual concerned.

    2) “If my data is my story then it should be told by me.”

    As you wrote in your previous post on MDM and as you say above, you doubt that we will be able to own our own data.

    I am agonised to read your words. I believe that we should make a legal distinction between “Barn-Stored Ownership of harvested personal data” and “The legal ownership of the data itself.”

    Example: If it is possible for Monsanto to mount a court case against farmers who use GM grain that they never bought from Monsanto (for example – because it was wind blown or accidentally added to another source of grain), then surely we as individuals can define the difference between our legal ownership of our own data, as opposed to the ownership-by-harvesting of our data?

    If I write all my friend’s names down on to a list, then that list belongs to me. The names of my friends were freely given. But if I add confidential information to that list about each friend, do I not cross a line in the sand if I were to sell that list for profit?

    I believe that Data Harvesting companies are in real danger of bringing down their own house through a lack of professional standards and self-regulation. Once down, the house will have to be rebuilt at phenomenal cost to the vendors and purchasers.

    Why do we applaud the naked Emperor, merely because he alone insists he is wearing clothes? Are we afraid of his power?

    Reply to this comment

    • Jim Harris

      Jun 28, 2012

      Thanks for your comment, Loop.

      The creation and monitoring of false data trails is an intriguing concept, and one that I have drafted a blog post about (under the working title: “The New Fake IDs”). And I have previously blogged about what I call our digital clones, which are all the copies of our personal data maintained by all of the companies we have directly done business with (as well as the data harvesting companies that collect our personal data without our knowledge, let alone our permission). Sometimes, it would be difficult to tell which is more inaccurate, digital clones or false data trails, since both are often more fiction than fact.

      I obviously agree with you that establishing legal ownership of our data shouldn’t be that complicated, but one of the main reasons that existing data protection and data privacy laws have been largely ineffective is because government, and many, if not most, of its citizens, have been slow to realize what “all this data stuff” is all about. Meanwhile, companies like Google and Facebook have built financial empires entirely out of data, which users freely gave away in exchange for what they saw as free services, not realizing that they were simply paying in a different currency (i.e., data is essentially the new global currency).

      And older, more established companies, the ones that implement MDM programs, and the ones that we exchange our real money for their goods and services, have been collecting our personal data during those financial transactions, and we have had no choice but to accept that this is the way the system works.

      For example, if I want to buy a car, and I don’t have enough cash, I have to finance the purchase with an auto loan, which I can’t get without giving my most sensitive personal financial data to the lending organization, which in turn assumes ownership of my personal data — it’s this last part that is the problem, but only relatively recently has the implications of this data ownership conundrum been a focal point of public discussion since 15 years ago, no one outside of the data management profession really knew what the heck data was. But nowadays, thanks (ironically) to companies like Google and Facebook, as well as mobile providers selling “data plans” for our smartphones, data is no longer an esoteric concept.

      Unfortunately, governments and the mainstream public, being late to the game in the sense of understanding the importance of data and the implications of data ownership, now have to deal with the fact that, although the Emperor is naked, his power is undeniable because of his financial empire, built on our personal data, which is temporarily clothing him with the shirts taken off of our own backs.

      I don’t mean to sound dire and pessimistic, since I do honestly believe that, eventually, change will come — we will see a day when we will be allowed to own our own data, when our legal ownership of our data will be considered just as much of an unalienable right as our personal freedom, when our Data Rights will be seen as an extension of our Civil Rights.

      Although the Status Quo will always Fight the Future, we know that change is the only universal constant. But we also know, from history’s lessons, that the more significant the change, the longer it will take for the change to happen.

      Best Regards,

      Jim

      Reply to this comment

  2. Jean-Michel Franco

    Jun 28, 2012

    Amazing topic, Jim.
    I’m just starting my research on this and found that some leaders and companies have started their journey in the “right way” as you consider it.
    For example, I went to a company called Privowny whose vision is : “For companies, owning consumer information is power. For consumers, this power should be in their control “. Their site and free downloadable tools are worth a look.
    Also, a new book have just been published by Doc Searles caller ‘The Intention Economy : when Customers take charge “.
    This will be my summer reading.

    Reply to this comment

  3. Geoff Revill

    Jul 05, 2012

    Hi Jim

    I am so with you on this issue. And its only going to get worse. Look at what heavily backed companies like keen.io are doing. They will be instrumenting apps so that what you do inside an app can be measured too….ostensibly to enhance the app… Take this kind of data, harvested like cookies, add auto mind mapping and profiling and see where it takes you. Scares the jebeezers out of me. Add in the insecurity elements and imagine what rogue elements can do with this data.

    I want to change practise….from the implicit privacy model of most businesses (which hides how much they harvest) to an explicit model, wherein the business makes it a matter of explicit business policy in simple terms what they take, then we as consumers can make a choice as to who we buy from….if a few companies get traction in this method then we have a competitive maket in which consumers choose who they take service and product from….that feeds directly back to how business works.

    In my own small way i am planning to do just this with a new company start up I am putting together….because my sense is that there is enough consumer concern to create a business out of this sort of model.

    Reply to this comment

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