In this very interesting post ‘The Billion User Table – The login is the gateway to the internet. And it’s about to get decentralized‘ some insight is given into the user data that is managed by internet giants and how much it is worth to them: the user table. With user blockchains this may be soon something from the past.
User tables is the main data repository of all internet and cloud services about their users, and it is what makes the worth of internet companies. “Even if your users are registering via a social sign-on button — i.e., they sign in with Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. — you’ve still got a users table with information that lets you track users and market to them.” This serves to enhance your impact but also to lock-in users one way or the other by knowing what they are doing even outside your services.
“So the entire online attention economy is built around proprietary users tables that different apps jealously guard and are constantly trying to grow. This being the case, the size of this table is a direct measure of the size of a tech platform. It’s not a proxy measure, either. It’s truly direct, because it’s literally the same number that the platforms are using internally and that partners and investors are using externally.”
At the moment each major platform has its own separate user table. But with the blockchain used as identification this approach is under threat. User tables would become centralized and major internet players could not leverage them in the competition. According to the author it may be a substantial revolution in the way network value is created on the internet. Definitely a new technology to be watched!
