On privacy, data ownership and self sovereign identity and the race to get there first.

People in the business know that companies 2.0 compete for our attention; a fierce competition with smaller and smaller margins (of attention). The end game is clearly advertisement. The pattern, simplistically, is:

1. user uses the service for free (or for very little money), 
2. company stores the data and profiles the user, aggregates profiles, does fancy Machine Learning magic, etc
3. company uses the data and derived information for targeted advertisement or (shock!) sells it to third parties for other lucrative endeavours.

Simple and effective.

Finally, people is getting more and more aware of what's going on (don't you, sometimes weirdly, feel like you're followed or even been scammed?); law makers are catching up to get a fair share of the revenue and economists are adjusting their theories to explain recent blips in their Capitalism models.

A trend is emerging where anonymity and privacy are becoming more and more important for users; and companies do make an effort to protect such users (from themselves?).
To the extent that some of them have announced changes to their business models. Facebook is paving the way.

This is definitely a step in the right direction but it's clearly not enough. Data is still stored in these companies' data stores and, moreover,  still - somewhat - traceable to a person.
Yet, we're seeing more and more efforts to frame the problem of data ownership in a lots of ways, some more creative than others.

Technology is also catching up (one of the many systems trying to tackle the issue is OpenPDS). And in the space of digital identity, self sovereign identity - users owning their digital identity much like they own their passport or identity card - is also being developed as a concept with associated technologies.

The problem, right now, is that companies haven't caught up as they haven't yet figured out how this switch will eventually affect their bottom line (read: make shareholders richer).
Implications, then, are that

• tools and processes for the end users aren't yet developed for mass market adoption: think, for a moment, about how easy(!) is to use a crypto wallet.
• incentives to move to this new model are virtually non existent so we can't really talk just yet of a new 3.0 model... maybe we can settle with a 2.5 though.

But - in a way - it's easy to see how this will eventually work. Companies will compete for that data: as if you were strewed with gold dust they'll knock at your (digital) door to come and swipe some of it. "Please, give us access to your browsing history for last month of May for the opportunity to win a trip to the Maldives!"; or: "Give us your Facebook timeline for last year to get a 10% grocery store discount for a whole month". And - make no mistake - we'll give it away (agent Smith echoes in my mind).

There will also be less mundane opportunities, obviously, which will generate new revenue streams ad new creative opportunities. A simple example comes to mind: "Hello A.C.M.E, here is access to my smart home data, please monitor it for intrusion detection and to activate my irrigation system when needed, whilst I am away. Oh, also please feed the dog, will you?!").

As long as this is done with fair, open and clear rules that guarantee the weakest users (like children and people with mental health issues, or the poorest) it's all welcome. 

In fact, forward looking enterprises should be pivoting right now and contribute to pave this new way in their respective market segment. Clearly, it's challenging: not only they need to embrace the risk of adopting cutting edge technologies, but also create new processes and redefine their identity if necessary. 

But the sooner they start the less the risk is to be caught by surprise. And maybe some of them will hit the jackpot and make it into the list.