Jeff Jarvis: Openness and the Internet

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Note well that this battle is being fought in the open as Facebook enables us to use our identity there on other sites and as Google endorses an open standard for identity.

Openness itself will also yield more knowledge and value in commercial relationships. Google recently announced that it would enable us to see and correct its targeting data about us. That might seem to be a defensive response to those pesky privacy advocates but it's actually cagey business. For whenever we set Google straight about us, it becomes better informed and can more effectively target advertising. I've long wanted to be able to tell sites which ads they should and shouldn't show me (if I have to see them anyway). That's the cookie that would put me in control and it would give marketers valuable (if not always comfortable) intelligence.

Of course, there is also gold in the aggregate data mined from our public actions and words—the wisdom of our crowd. The more public we are, the more opportunities there are to learn and create value. If there's a business model behind Twitter, I suspect it's that, for Twitter's treasure is tapping into what a critical mass of people are doing—and thinking—right now.

Helping People Create and Connect

As we see publicness grow as a force in society—and it will—it's important to understand the phenomenon in the context of the Internet itself. Contrary to the dreams of publishers and producers, the Internet is not a medium, and contrary to the hopes of retailers, it's not a cash register.

No, the Internet is all about creation and connections. It enables any of us to create content and find an audience for it—the purest public act. Fame is a force almost as powerful as sex and money. The Internet also connects us with information and each other. The key to Facebook's growth, I think, is that it moves past the tiresome fad of anonymity online to help us establish real identities and organize real relationships.

There is where the opportunities will be in publicness: helping people create, helping their creations to be found, and helping people connect. That will be the secret to social success.

Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do? (Collins, January 2009), teaches at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism and blogs at Buzzmachine.com.

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