Fluidinfo usernames can be roughly divided into three use classes:
Referring to this third class, we can informally speak of Fluidinfo domains, understanding that these are just Fluidinfo usernames (i.e., a top-level namespace) that exactly match a regular internet domain.
Usernames matching internet domains are reserved for the owners of the internet domain. To obtain a Fluidinfo username matching an internet domain you must be able to prove that you control the domain name. This will be confirmed via you being able to respond to email sent to the domain and/or create a specific web page.
Any dispute over a Fluidinfo username corresponding to an internet domain will be resolved in favor of the domain owner.
The answer is very simple: it will allow your products to be found in new ways.
A regular internet domain gives a company a way to stamp their name (via a URL) on entire web pages of information. Fluidinfo offers a way to stamp your company name on individual pieces of data.
Whereas the web gets you a massive audience having the uniform experience of looking at single mass-audience product web pages, Fluidinfo lets any application get to products via all sorts of routes that a retailer cannot anticipate, and which would not be cost effective for them to build. If I want to see Amazon books that are less than $20 and which have been looked at by Esther, we can do it, e.g., via easy-to-write Firefox extensions, assuming Amazon puts their price onto the book object. It’s in the interest of Amazon to do this, because it helps people find their products. Amazon, and many others, provide an API to get hold of their data - they want applications to be written which present their products. Putting that data directly into Fluidinfo makes great sense.
It has never been possible to put individual pieces of data (e.g., a single price) somewhere with a domain name on it so as to let applications (and hence the people who use them) directly combine them, and augment them, to find your products in any way they like. While the web provides a single mass-audience user interface to a product, Fluidinfo allows for arbitrarily many interfaces, and these can be as personalized as you like.
Though a retailer like Amazon has done a good job of trying to personalize things for you (“people who bought X also bought Y”), that approach is still mass audience to a large extent. I want to know if my friend Russell or someone I’m connected to on Goodreads bought a book, not (only) if some bunch of anonymous people did, even if those people are, according to Amazon, in some sense like me.
Fluidinfo opens access to that lower stratum of information personalization, and correspondingly personalized routes to products. To make it possible for applications that allow that sort of product access, a company needs to be able to put its data onto objects in a recognizable way, via a name that carries reputation, trust, goodwill etc. Fluidinfo usernames that correspond to internet domains give you an instant and low-cost mechanism for doing just that.
Of course applications need to be written to fulfil this potential. Fluidinfo provides the information platform that makes it possible (simple!) to do so.
