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21 Nov 2005
Roles
Martin Lindner comments on the word user on a reaction to a post by Robert Scoble.
For me it all depends on the role a person plays with respect to the respective service. If I use a specific website, I am an user. If I use my ISP, I am a user. Or in general when I surf over the Internet, I am a user, although in this case the service is rather vague.
Things change however when the relation between me and the service becomes more formalised. I might begin as a visitor and become a cookied visitor. And things change even more when I subscribe to a service. Then the service knows me, I became a (identified) customer, but I am still an user. And then I might even become a paying customer. These roles all sound a bit like the customer life-cycle.
And one can change the name depending on the service that I am using: I am a searcher on Google, I am a publisher on Blogger, etc. But then all these new words for these roles seem to become a bit of overkill. But I agree with Robert Scoble that some service providers might see their customers as slaves, which help to get their business model going.