Spying On Myself

It seems kind of like an odd concept.  Why would anyone need to spy on themselves?

Well I can think of a bunch of reasons when it comes to digital media.

But first, a little historical context.

We've all had that terrible experience with spyware that has been installed on our machines without our knowledge or permission. That spyware often tracked our behavior and used that information to deliver popup ads or some other form of annoyance.  Fortunately, through technology, government attention, and changing market norms, the spyware threat seems to be fading a bit.

Maybe the logical successor to spyware is "myware" as my friend Seth Goldstein likes to call it.

Myware is software that runs on our computers and other digital devices and tracks our behavior, in many ways like the spyware we all hate.  But there's an important difference.  Myware is put on our devices by us.  We spy on ourselves.  Again, why would we do this?

Well, for one because we honestly can't keep track of everything we do.  And because what we do and how we consume digital media is important.  Important to us and to others who might learn about new stuff by watching our behavior.

Some examples.

Last.fm is a music service that I've written about in the past.  You download and install some "myware" that last.fm provides and it tracks the music you listen to in iTunes, Winamp, Yahoo!,and a number of other music services. Your music listening history is shown on the web to you, in case you are interested in seeing what you've been listening to, and everyone else.  In addition, last.fm has a music player that creates a streaming audio/internet radio channel just for you based on what you've been listening to.  And, most importantly, last.fm creates a social network for you by linking you to people who share your music tastes.  It's a great service and I use it all the time to find new music.

Attention Trust is a non-profit that is trying to promote user control over their clickstream information.  If you use Firefox, you can download the Attention Trust Firefox Extension and it will capture all of your clickstream information and report it to any Attention Trust compliant services.  I do that and send my data to a Root Vault. I am not exactly sure what will happen if you click on the link to Root Vault.  But when I do it, I see a summary of my web clickstream.  It is interesting to me to know that I spend 14% of my Internet clicks on this blog, by far more than anywhere else.  Next is Amazon.com with 6%.  Rhapsody and Delicious come in next around 2%.  That's interesting to me.  I would like to be able to share that information with everyone else in the hope that it may be useful in some way to others. My friend Seth Goldstein is involved in both Attention Trust and Root and has done as much thinking about this as anyone I know.

These are two good ones, but there are many more.  While this isn't technically an example of myware, Josh and I have been spending a lot of time on Xbox and Xbox Live.  Xbox tracks your game play and records your level of skill and then shows that to everyone else on Xbox Live so you can get paired into a quality match.  Another excellent example of spying on yourself at work.

The point I am making here is that spying on yourself is a trend that I see developing on the Internet and in digital media in general.  I think it will bring tremendous value to users over time as they and others benefit from the data that is created in this way.  As long as the user is in control of their myware data, and they must be for any of this to work, then I see no reason why this won't be a great thing for everyone.

If someone is going to spy on you, it's probably best if its you.

Comments

[Devin Reams]

I love these myware applications. I, too, have been using audioscrobbler/last.fm for a while and it's useful to me. Does anyone else out there know of any similar applications? Obviously Google has us tracking out search behavior but I wouldn't be surprised if there is more stuff out there...

[ellen]

Excellent post. I think Mr. Goldstein is really on to something.

[Marina Architect]

With all due respect Fred, I enjoy your sensibility, spirit and insight but I believe this is misguided self interest on your part.

Here's why: tracking, attention, clickstream, etc. do not serve the user and no inherent value exists in algorithms providing/serving up ads based on user behavior. It's the equivalent of the persistent question "What's the best ... ?". That's a persistent question that will never be answered by targeted tracking or search engines.

That's where organic networks come into play. Ultimately, networks like Myspace, yahoo 360, linked in will be minable with organic search results for "best this or that" along with ads on the side. Then we have something, get the idea?

One last note, organic networks need a search engine, results mining. 2006?

[charlie crystle]

I have for a long time wanted to build something that tracks everything I do on the computer--I just haven't had the time or inclination to build it. A few months ago I looked for something that did it and found it--it tracks time spent in each application. In uninstalled it after a while because I kept looking at the usage graphs, but at some point I might do a version myself that's a little more elegant (hopefully). Here are some that do that

http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html?tag=srch&qt=track+time+applications&tg=dl-20

[Ric]

Fred

"I am not exactly sure what will happen if you click on the link to Root Vault."

I get:
"Sorry, you can only access your own people page."

So it's OK - they at least try and keep your clickstream info private ...

BTW - I'm glad you took a month off "Positively" - I'm now only 6 podcasts behind, and I'm sure I screwed up the sequence somewhere! You've put me onto some good music - next "bite" will be M. Ward.

If James Governor is reading - don't waste the eMusic invite on me - I discovered that although I cancelled out signing up when they asked for a credit card, they did actually enrol me, and I got my free downloads, and am still thinking about signing up for the subscription.

[Matt]

Excellent post, Fred. I'm a huge fan of last.fm and will check out AT and RV now.

@Marina: "tracking, attention, clickstream, etc. do not serve the user and no inherent value exists in algorithms providing/serving up ads based on user behavior." Are you nuts?

[Dylan Salisbury]

The trend I see here is data generated and controlled by the consumer but also validated by a third party. Clickstream data is just one example, but there's also medical information, professional references (LinkedIn being the start here), etc...

[PG]

All this data (clickstream, health info, purchase history, rss subscriptions) are my personomy. This data is mine, created by me and right now is used to the benefits of others (google of course, but roots too). I want to know when I will be able to monetize it myself? More on my blog.

[OG]

In the end, this post could turn out to be a pretty stupid thing for me to do, but I'm going to do it anyway. I'm the CEO of an early stage startup in this field. We're still well under the radar, which is probably best for now, but after reading this post, I'm too excited to keep quiet.

My colleagues and I believe that "myware" will actually have a much broader impact than this post or any of the comments suggest, and will soon form a necessary part of efforts like the W3C's semantic web. In the very near future, we see this stuff working in conjunction with mobile networks, networked agent technology, open source, and web services to change the nature of every single digital experience we have from now on. We see this because we're building it today.

I'm going to stop there, before I say something that could get me into more trouble, but at least I know which VC to contact when we've finished our executive summary.

Good lookin' out, Fred Wilson, I like you already.

[Seth Russell]

I think there is a variation of "myware" ... let me call it "ourware". It is the devises whereby a community becomes aware of that which impinges upon it. I called myself doing a bit of innovation in that area. Now the community of fastblogit can "spy" on everyone who comes there ... can even chat with them. It is being discussed in the room chat-who-is-here. You can get to the "spy" room by clicking on the "Chat Who's Here" button in the nav bar. You will not believe the amount of information that i have gleened about how my site interfaces with the rest of the web from watching in that room.

[Edison Thomaz]

Fred,

Have been reading your blog for some time. Good stuff!
I have built an application for the Mac OS that observes your activities and then displays them in a visualization. It's called Onlife (http://www.getonlife.com). I would welcome you to check it out and then let me know what you think. I've had conversations with Seth about attention data as well.