People are tired of profiling and retargeting and of an obsolete vendor-centric customer relationship model. Established brands are freaked out by the “uberization” syndrome; they must quickly regain intimacy with the customer. Many question the long-term efficiency of Platform economics and of the freemium model. The balance is shifting between users, brands, and platforms. The obvious idea that the user is the primary controller of its own data (even though there is no such thing as “data ownership” from a legal standpoint), will clearly change a lot of things. It puts digital identity at the core of the matter, because fundamentally the ultimate data integration platform is the user itself. How will this change customer interactions? What services can be offered? Who will be paying for these? Can technology deliver?
