Lab+6

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__**Response**__ Rob dickens discusses the future of the web and what web 3.0 has in store. He emphasises that we as consumers are being “empowered to dictate to brands on a whole range of economic indicators: price points, discounts, standards, safety, environmental issues, group buying, quality and service levels.” We as the consumers have an identity, a brand, which has solidified through the use of social web. With our many online profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.) we have the power to monitor and dictate online marketing.

In earlier years, consumers did not have the power to measure how effective and deep online marketing is. In order to make accurate predictions on consumer/buyer power in both real and virtual world, companies will have had to pay enormous amounts of money for marketing research which sometimes produces useless information. Rob reaffirms that there is now a shift from company based marketing to consumer “user-generated” marketing. In which we, the consumer are providing information freely to the companies. Companies are now using various web tools/companies to gain insight, measure and data mine that information for their potential benefit.

Rob explains that we need to own our “brand” and “the sooner we start measuring our social graph’s influence and optimizing online engagement, the more prepared we will be for this shift and the more value we will be able to extract” (Dickens). This highlight’s the invisible contract present on the web: where users are given a service for free, in exchange for the enthusiastic giving of their information. As web 3.0 continues to develop and evolve to the next new thing, we can only hope that we the users/consumer will not be screwed over by this invisible contract, where all our information will be used against us, to a point where we have to succumb to whatever is dictated to us.

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