Let's start with the harsh, terrifying shit. Yes. I am linking a email address I solely use for Mint to a single bank account. In fact the name Mint calls me is NOT the name on my bank account. And Mint is fine with that. I trust Mint with my account because its going to break down the amount I spend and put it in pretty graphs. That provides real value to me. Literally - that helps me save money. I give you access to my money account so that I can save money. Yes. Further, as far as I know, Mint never asked for my Facebook and doesn't know my age or gender or education history or employment history or mother's name or birthday or amount of friends I have. I'm sure there are algorithms they could use to figure all this out based on my spending but it's not asking me to provide those things. It's not telling me to combine ALL that information so they can do stuff with it. And netflix and spotify work because they are apps where I also do one thing: I watch movies or play music. It then takes that anonymous data about millions of users and use it to recommend movies or watch music. See - we're all still dealing with a single thing. Further, Spotify doesn't promote itself as music personalization. Netflix doesn't market itself as movie personalization. Both are giving consumers access to "all the music" and "all the movies" for a monthly fee. It gives people recommendations as an additional bonus. But the personalization is more behind the scenes. The thought "oh, Spotify is going to track all the songs I listen to so that it can improve it's recommendations" never crosses my mind. Schreeeeech. What this app is doing it taking where I spend money so it can tell me where to eat. Those are two very separate areas of my life. I expect Google to track my searches. I expect Spotify to track my music listening. I do NOT expect my bank to track the songs I listen to. Nor do I expect Spotify to track my budgeting habits. And this is going to be the major problem with this app. I am aware of privacy, I am aware of the invasions. I am fully fucking aware I am not in ANY SENSE OF THE WORD hard to track. I make a lot of choices that allow me to get value in return for giving up privacy. I'm also a bit lazy. But there's still no way that I'm ever going to give my bank account information to any company in return for a 3-way invasion of privacy so that I can get restaurant - or any other personalized- recommendations. There is no real value there. Let's not forget that THIS APP IS GIVING MY SPENDING INFORMATION TO THE PLACES I EAT SO THAT THEY CAN ALSO TRACK ME. Then it's also giving every other motherfucking restaurant or person in this world this data, indirectly and anonymized, hopefully. Mint doesn't give my information to others or use it to tell others how to budget based on my information. It simply throws a list of numbers into a graph and when that graph hits $200/month on eating out, an ad automatically displays "HEY YOU SHOULD GET THE BOFA CARD THAT GIVES YOU 5% BACK WHEN YOU EAT OUT!" I ignore those. If I were to know that Mint was giving my information to BofA every time that happened, there's no way I would be using that app. If I knew Mint was taking all my spending habits, comparing them to other people in my demographic / location / music tastes and then using that to do more stuff with, I would be hesitant to use Mint anymore. And, again, Mint is literally helping me save money. It's not promising to tell me that it knows the food I like. So - it's not all bad. This is where the future is going, whether I like it or not. People are more and more willing to give up information in return for personalized results. The difference is in the marketing. Google is probably one of the most invasive companies on Earth right now and even those who realize the full extent of it's power, don't care enough to force real changes. Every time Google knows what I am really trying to search for, I remind myself that at least I don't have an Android phone, too. This app would probably be wildly successful if launched in 4-5 years. It would probably be wildly successful if it didn't want bank account information. There needs to be something to alleviate any privacy & tracking concerns. At the very least, statements like: and should never come out of his mouth. That makes me terrified. You have my bank account and now your are partnering with the government (sorry - "economic dev group")?! Are you kidding me?! If this was Google, or Facebook, or Yelp, or Mint and that came out of the CEO / CMO's mouth, it would be an absolutely shitstorm - PR nightmare. There is a reason businesses are considered B2B or B2C. When you fall in the middle, you have overlapping goals with major differences in target demographics. Then both the consumer and the businesses become hesitant and you lose out on both. If a business promotes itself as B2C, but is internally selling and making most of it's money on B2B services, that can work. But your branding and marketing is never going to work doing both. Angie's List is a good example of a service that appears to be B2C but is actually working very hard behind the scenes to obtain and sell to businesses. I only know this because a client, a small business owner, got sold to. It is a valuable service for her because she can see reviews left by people and leave her own comments in response to negative reviews. But you don't see that information on their website - it only comes in email or phone calls. This is a strong point of the app. That is providing real value to customers. But, right now, this is just another feature or added benefit of the app. In my opinion, an app that solely allowed people to get perks at restaurants they visit most is a much stronger idea. It might be worth considering a plan that begins as a perks app and grows to allow messages between merchant and customer, or grows to add recommendations based on your transaction history, or grows to add public reviews that are verified by transaction. Their goals are strong. Some of the things they want to do are nobel. The possibilities with this app are strong. But the creators seem to be completely oblivious to the very valid privacy concerns that people are going to have. The fact that they are oblivious is even more terrifying because it shows that they aren't focused on protecting my privacy. The only thing worse than being secretly tracked is being not-so-secretly tracked by a company that doesn't take the necessary steps to ensure my data is anonymized, my data is secure, and my data isn't freely given to random, or not so random, people / government / businesses. There is a reason Google stands up and shouts and thumps it's chest every time the government gets called out for invading privacy. Google can do the same exact shit, but they are careful not to show it, purposefully market it as a feature, or let people besides Google have access to it.Mint and other personal finance websites have shown that 35 million users are willing to link their accounts to budgeting services.
So what we’re doing is Netflix-ing or Spotify-ing
The bet we are making is that people will be willing to link their account for personalized recommendations and recognition to merchants.
Transaction data is valuable to consumers, merchants, and third parties like small business entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out the best places to start their businesses. It’s valuable to a local commercial bank trying to understand the demand for certain categories of business like a restaurant, and also to government for being able to measure and inform economic policy."
We will provide them with a macro level map of economic activity in Ann Arbor so they can make smarter decisions. We’ll say, “Here are our patterns, and when people come to Main Street this is typically the type of thing they will do or spend on a restaurant or an entertainment venue.”
“Every time a platinum customer comes into my store, send them a push notification telling them to show this message to the host to get priority seating.”
So, actually, I think this part is potentially a problem Insom: This is a strong point of the app. That is providing real value to customers. But, right now, this is just another feature or added benefit of the app. In my opinion, an app that solely allowed people to get perks at restaurants they visit most is a much stronger idea. It might be worth considering a plan that begins as a perks app and grows to allow messages between merchant and customer, or grows to add recommendations based on your transaction history, or grows to add public reviews that are verified by transaction. I think it's a problem because I'm proving to kleinbl00 that I read Predictable Irrationality, a behavioral economics book by Dan Ariely, and am absorbing it. More specifically, I think that when you establish a trackable, tit-for-tat system for the perks that come with frequent restaurant patronage, you move a customer's relationship with a restaurant further into the market norms category. Market norms are economic norms. Money is a market norm. When we look at things in market terms, Ariely has observed that we act more selfishly. We are less inclined to do favors for others. We want tit for tat, a fair exchange, to get what we paid for. Based on my experience with the bars and restaurants I frequent, I've established a social normative relationship with the place and/or, more accurately, with the people who work there. Social norms are basically the norms of personal interaction; of friendship, humanity, and exchanges that occur within relationships. I have affection for the restaurant and its workers. That's why I keep going back: for a feeling, not a product. Gifts are social norms. That's why it's okay to bring a nice bottle of wine to Thanksgiving dinner for your girlfriend's mom who cooked, but not okay to give her $100 to pay her for cooking. Gifts represent gratitude and relationship but keep the money and numbers out of it. I'd say that the perks that established restaurant patrons, or "regulars," enjoy, are like gifts. There's no directly stated price value to a better table, an especially helpful waitress, a heavy-handed pour from the bartender, a free drink when the bartender accidentally pours an order wrong. I'd even say that because you don't see your receipt/tab til the end of the night, comped drinks seem more like gifts. Tips, of course, introduce market norms - but at the end of the evening after all the social interaction. They don't put an immediate value on each interaction (unless you're paying cash and closing out after every drink). On the other hand, creating an app with a system where you have to "check in" so many times to earn the next "reward level" where then you have to show a manager some screen on your app in order to get one of these "regulars' benefits" strips away all the humanity of it. It also creates a system where the benefit is directly tied to a price/number of some sort. I think it would damage bars'/restaurants' social relationships with their customers, and since I think it's the social relationship that establishes regulars (as much as the food or drinks) I think that could be a detrimental pairing in the long run. Maybe tips would go down, for instance, as customers have already "paid" for their benefits via checking-in. I really still think verifying reviews via transaction is overkill. I would frankly be worried about security, where the information was coming from, what would be displayed publicly on the site (like what you ordered, for instance? would it be a digital copy of a receipt - I wouldn't like that at all), stuff like that. In addition it totally kills reviews for anyone who generally pays cash or is "underbanked," i.e., doesn't for whatever reason have access to the banking benefits of the general public. Who could afford to eat at a restaurant but might not be able to open a bank account? Well, felons for one. (There's no law against this; I've only heard of one bank who denies accounts to felons to date, but hey! It's a thing!) Or maybe consumers under 18 - who didn't go out on a couple expensive fancy dinner dates for V-Day and whatever with their bf/gf at age 16? (I am aware a counter-argument can be made that we are limiting the population to "people who have devices that use apps/internet" and ALSO "people who have bank accounts," and that cross-section is less likely to have cash users and underbanked consumers in it, but I'd be really interested in some stats.) “Every time a platinum customer comes into my store, send them a push notification telling them to show this message to the host to get priority seating.”
I've created a monster You bring up something I hadn't thought about - parameter mismatch. The app monetizes your transactions and provides value to the establishments. What does it provide for you? As Insom points out, it texts them to remind them you deserve a VIP table, which turns a typical human nuance (as you mention) into a gamified prize. What you give is decidedly not what you get. I used to spend my time on a survey site (the source of my Garden and Gun subscription) that gave me prizes in exchange for my time. I was trading market input for market output. It was pure tit for tat. It worked just fine. This is the opposite of that.
I understand where you are coming from and that it is a good and a bad thing, but what is there really to do? For the most part, most of what I've read here is news and it is a strong issue. It just feels terrible to have to sit around and wait to see if your ideas will/can be heard by like-minded people. They certainly exist, but are they actually a big enough group to make a difference? What I'm trying to get at here is this :are we really the minority here? I may be fairly apathetic (no, this isn't a good thing, but I have trouble finding the time to have an educated opinion on these things) to most news nowadays (honestly I have no idea how I should view the real issue, there's so much information to read), but I feel there must be a move to be made or a way around it. Humans in general can be innovative, right? Maybe I'm not the best example, but some are great at figuring ways around things and helping others do the same to some degree. You know, making a way to get around what we don't like? I'm not necessarily endorsing running around the law, but from what I know that's how things have gone in the past and I don't really see a huge problem with it. I don't necessarily trust corporations with my data, for the most part I let them have it because the negative of boycotting it completely is debilitating to my social life and also hurts how I know what my friends are up to in general. I want to stay in touch with a fairly selective group of people, but calling his/her home phone is no longer acceptable or enjoyable. The way it works for me is that I text them, then I call their cell, and if that doesn't work, I facebook message them. My friends will usually answer in an hour or two, and we will figure out plans. Even Hubski makes it easier to meet new people if you fine with the people you are interacting with. For some reason meeting people over the net has become a lot less...creepy and sketchy I guess? My main challenge is how to separate the websites that I use to keep in touch/meet new people and keeping track of my habits. Is that so impossible? I know this was a bit of a rant, but insomniasexx you seem to think everything is going to be fluidly functioning with all of the behavioral trackers working with the same company or corporation. Or that we will no longer have any kind of natural privacy rights if they are able to implement what they plan to do. But in my opinion, if we are going to have our information tracked anyways, shouldn't we at least split it up to create a balance on who controls the information? And also, is that even possible anymore with the way that, again in my opinion, that we seem somewhat powerless in the decisions that the federal and state governments may decide? I'm confused about this whole ordeal. And my ideas may seem convoluted. It's late and I'm just 'trying to communicate my ideas as clearly as possible. I've read the article. I might be going on a tangent here, but we have so much potential for what the internet can do. This is one of them, he is right. Personalizing advertising and knowing exactly what you might want has fantastic potential. However, does this come at the cost of creativity? Everything has a "risk" and a "reward." How are we to tell exactly how these actions will affect society, other than what we think will change our lives positively or negatively? I feel like I'm missing something important here. Totally went off topic there, oops. Hopefully someone will be able to make sense of what I just said.