from the rightcliq website. What's up with the toolbelts?

Ever since Steve Jobs and Woz unveiled their little pet project to bring computing to the masses, we’ve had a debate about where the application should live: server-side or client-side.  IBM always argued that server-side is faster, cleaner, and generally more profitable for them.  Bill Gates made his billions bringing apps to the client-side.  Cloud Computing is really this argument wrapped in shiny new clothing– and has been blargged about ad nauseum everywhere else, so I won’t bother with that.

I mention that debate simply to bring up what might be a parallel argument that is forming now that many sites are becomming socially-aware.  Here’s the topic: is a social network invidivual-centric (client-side) or catalog-centric (server-side)? This isn’t a debate about where the actual software app resides, that’s pretty much invisible now.  For a social network, the core function is the graph– but where is that centered?  Is it centered around the individual (like facebook), or around the catalog (like amazon.com)?

An individual-centric graph has the person at the center, and she is free to add her friends, likes, dislikes, and catalog choices to her graph.  In this model, she will always want to log in with her personal network ID, and then interact or share with a given website.  Facebook is this way.  Pluck offers this kind of model.

A Catalog-centric graph has the products or new topics acting as the currency of the graph, and individuals may come and interact with them as they please.  The individuals may even use their Facebook ID for logging in, but the graph stays with the catalog and is structured in a way to build out the graph between those products, regardless of who or which individuals contributed any given part.  Bazaarvoice is a catalog-centric model

At first blush, it would seem that the individual-centric graph has run the table, but this may change. Faceboook offers a ‘like’ button just about anywhere (any major website) now, and people are certainly participating.  But those same individuals are starting to push back on the flood of information coming into their facebook feed.  Everyone is hungry for peer-driven invormation about products, but very few are willing to contribute content if it pollutes their friend feed.

Can a catalog-centric graph solve this concern for users?  Would you be willing to review more products or “like” more things if it could be somewhat anonymous?  What would you need in return?  Will you want to segment off your personal contacts (all your high-school drinking buddies) away from your shopping guru mentors?  Visa has announced Right Cliq, an individual addon that serves as the bridge between the individual graph and catalog graph.  Sure, we need another social network like another holein the head, but this may actually have some legs: consolidate your shopping peer-driven information with your purchase history, while segmenting it away from your personal contacts.

It becomes a catalog-centric social graph, but it belongs to Visa, not to the vendor.

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