Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Even with the big retailer conveniences of aggregation and
intermediation, each is itself still a silo. And that remains a
problem, because there are limits to what can be done by, and for,
customers within a silo.

We are now at a point, in the history of retailing, when the limits of
vendor-side aggregation and intermediation have been reached, and when
in fact they have been over-reached by some of those same companies,
especially through the use of entrapping inconveniences such as loyalty
cards, coupons, rewards and discounting. The frictions involved with
those are gigantic. If you shop at Trader Joe's, you can witness the
benefits to both a seller and a buyer of no entrapping gimmicks at all:
good products, low prices, and absent marketing frictions. And
customers love them for it.

It's time to build out ways for each of us as individuals to have our
own forms of aggregation and reach — in standard, common ways — across
multiple retailers and services. That's the main thing VRM is for. (And
it goes beyond UI.)

To some degree we already have this with cash and credit. Cash is
ours, when we have it, and it works with all vendors. A bank is
essentially a fourth party — one working for us rather than for the
seller. (Ignoring for now all the ways banks have misbehaved since
radical deregulation of securities manipulation by them.) To some
degree so are Visa, Amex and MasterCard, even though they make more
money on the sell side than the buy side (slicing off a small chunk of
every transaction). But we could use more, and better, means. 

By definition VRM is something the individual has and does. It's not
something "provided" to them by a seller. Obviously there are many good
things sellers can do. But they can't do it all. And, now that we're
reaching the limits of vendor-side build-out of buyer conveniences, VRM
can more clearly be seen as a greenfield.
  

    
Big thanks to Doc for this enlightening discussion about vendor
relationship management and _The Intention Economy_. Also thanks to
everyone else who contributed. Reminder that you can find more
information here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/projectvrm/Main_Page -
also here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_economy.
  

    
Thanks Doc, this has been enlightening. Kudos for all the various
groups and sites you've put together. All the best with the coming book
as well.
  

    
(I meant that in response to the question from <Tex> about whether news
organizations are usuing TikTok.) Here's the NYT Tiktok channel, which I
don't have access to because the University of Texas prohibits access under
its interpretation of Texas law, which says a lot of what you might want to
know about Texas law.

<https://www.tiktok.com/@nytimes?lang=en>
  

    
Good on them for doing it.

Back in the 90s, pre-twitter, I was on a panel at the US J School
where I advised the students to study how to write ad copy because
that is where the discipline of tight, clear writing gets done, and
often done very well, despite the nature of the message.  

This was all before social media took over, but it was clear to me
already that attention spans were shortening dramatically and
communicating well already required tight writing.  I had to study
it to learn marketing (being hired as the WELL Marketing Director
who knew very little about marketing skills) and it was quite
beneficial, as was the influence of the Whole Earth style of
reviewing things, which were always pithy but on point.
  

    
I always liked the Whole Earth approach of:
"Write your review, then write a cover letter explaining WHY we should
publish the review, then throw away the review and just send us the cover
letter."
  

    
The last three responses belong in the other topic.
  

    
I was gonna say...
  

    

whoops. my apologies.
  

    
mea whoopsie