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| Each actor is expected to perform a number of tasks within Talisman. These tasks are outlined below: |
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| Talisman provides users with the three things they value most: convenience, savings, and privacy. Through the safe collection of greater amounts of more accurate user information, electronic services can offer more targeted, personalized experiences to their users. |
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| Although the vast majority of work needed to maintain this system is performed by the services themselves, users do bear some of the responsibility for ensuring the system’s correct operation. Specifically, in addition to taking advantage of the various personalized services, users must maintain their accounts, sign on as necessary, and sign off when done. |
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| The primary task of service providers, especially those associated with e-commerce, is to use personal data for end-user benefit through personalized services, streamlined operations, and market research. |
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Personalization is the process of altering the presentation and behavior of a service to optimize for the preferences of the user. Personalization can be used to make more targeted product recommendations, provide more interesting content, and generally provide a more effective service. The key to personalization is knowing what the user wants, which requires knowing a high quantity of high quality personal information about that user. An example of personalization is a news service using knowledge of a user’s reading history, stock portfolio, and book buying habits to determine what subset of the day’s news is the most interesting to the user. |
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Similar to personalization, services can streamline operations to accelerate and simplify their use. When cost is no longer the driving factor in the eyes of the consumer, speed and simplicity provide key competitive advantages. The classic example of a streamlined operation is Amazon’s one-click checkout system: Were this feature integrated with a streaming music player (perhaps through a “buy” button on a satellite radio for automobiles), the time between making a purchasing decision and completing the purchase could be vastly reduced. |
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Finally, all businesses rely upon market research to understand the needs of their customers. Market research consists of understanding the habits and interests of various demographic groups, defining products for each of these groups, and then targeting products and advertisement to those groups. The value of this market research depends heavily upon the volume, accuracy, and timeliness of data – attributes directly improved through Talisman. |
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| All of these benefits depend upon access to personal user information. However, the mere existence of these data collections creates the possibility of abusive privacy violations. Thus, as a cost of doing business with personal user data, services must have secondary tasks associated with abiding by realm oversight. These oversight tasks, along with the tasks associated with storing and hosting the user accounts, are left to the service providers to perform. |
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| Realms are groups of services and related data that perform a coherent, real-world function for users. Each realm is represented by a realm provider that “certifies” services within its realms to guarantee particular levels of security, adherence to privacy policies, legitimacy, etc. Just as the Food and Drug Administration certifies foods as safe to eat, realm providers certify services as safe to use. |
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| Realm providers are tasked with gaining the support of the services covered by the realm; arbitrating and publishing standards to represent data relevant to the realm; and defining the default rules that regulate how services use that data. |
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