Thursday, September 01, 2005

It's all about owning future customer intent

Over at the Oodle blog someone (Craig Donato?) has got it nailed - "It's all about love-in, not lock-in." The number one reason that Google is valuable is that they own future customer intent. I use their search, I love it, I plan to go back. As long as that is true, they don't need any of my customer data, or any hold over me. The instant that stops being true, then they have problems. Big problems.

Search sites that are attempting to personalize -- like A9 and Snap -- should be doing so to lock in future customer intent through value, not lock in future reluctant usage through pain.

If you do it right, it's no longer "locked in" so much as "nested". Thinking about nesting your customers is such a better idea then incarcerating them...

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