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Barcodes and the UPC have helped us identify products in the physical world for four decades. How can the same system of identification for products be leveraged to provide identity in the digital world?
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Product ID in a Digital World
Ken Sickles, February 2013
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The Digital World Today
Is a connected system (web) of linked documents
HTML
HTML
HTML
HTML
HTML
HTML
HTML
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The Digital World Today
These documents have meaning to humans…
Samsung TV!
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The Digital World Today
These documents have meaning to humans, and must be explicitly linked to related documents
This is about that Samsung TV too!
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The Digital World Today
But to computers, they have little to no explicit meaning.
What is this
about?
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The Digital World Today
And unless done by a human, computers can’t find other documents that are about the same thing.
Are these related?
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The Digital World Today
That is why Google was born. To tell computers what pages were about, and the relationships between them.
Pretty sure these are
about Samsung TV
Complicated code &
algorithmsThanks, I’ll tell
the human.
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But a new way for computers to identify things in the digital world is emerging…
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The Emerging Digital World
Computers can find related pages without explicit declaration from a human (or guess from Google).
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{HTML…Person ID: https://linkedin.com/kensickles…/HTML}
Both are about Ken Sickles!
{HTML…Person ID: https://linkedin.com/kensickles…/HTML}
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The Emerging Digital World
This simple URI code is the Identification Authority in the digital world for People (Ken Sickles).
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Person ID: https://linkedin.com/kensickles
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The Emerging Digital World
The computer readable code behind the URI also tells computers related information.
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Person ID: https://linkedin.com/kensicklesName: “Ken Sickles“Current Employer: “1WorldSync“Previous Employer: “Dow Jones“Funny: True
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The Emerging Digital World
Imagine if the same thing existed for products?
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{HTML…Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623…/HTML}
Both are about
Samsung TV!
{HTML…Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623…/HTML}
® 1Wor ldSync 2013
The Emerging Digital World
This simple URI code is the Identification Authority in the digital world for Products (Samsung TV).
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Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623
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The Emerging Digital World
The computer readable code behind the URI also tells computers related information.
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Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623GTIN: 00794043444623brand: “Samsung",website: http://www.facebook.com/Samsung,Company Prefix: 0123GPC: ”television",type: “plasma”,classification: “hi definition”,Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232112Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232113Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232114
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How Do We Make This Work
First we create a big database with all of the product identification information, and publish the URI for every GTIN
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Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623
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How Do We Make This Work
Then we convince page owners to embed the associated URI in their web pages
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{HTML…Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623…/HTML}
{HTML…Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623…/HTML}
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How Do We Make This Work
When a computer (search engine, social media site, etc.) find this code, they know exactly the product/category
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Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623GTIN: 00794043444623brand: “Samsung",website: http://www.facebook.com/Samsung,Company Prefix: 0123GPC: ”television",type: “plasma”,classification: “hi definition”,Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232112Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232113Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232114
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How Do We Make This Work
When a barcode is scanned mobile app providers can just add the “http://…” in front of the UPC code to get Product ID
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Product ID: https://gtin.com/00794043444623GTIN: 00794043444623brand: “Samsung",website: http://www.facebook.com/Samsung,Company Prefix: 0123GPC: ”television",type: “plasma”,classification: “hi definition”,Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232112Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232113Variant: http://gtin.com/00012343232114
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How This Looks
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Product Graph
https://graph.gtin.com/
00794043444623
Brand Owner UI
Digital GTIN URI (and computer readable code)
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Industry Support
The major search engines already support this (schema.org)
ALL brand owners and ALL e-commerce providers already put this type of code in their web pages (Facebook, Google+, Twitter, etc.)
Very easy for mobile app developers to use
Aligned with technology industry direction (see Tim Burners Lee TED talk)
It can use the symbology (UPC/EAN) that already exists in the physical world
We can start with*existing* Data in GDSN/Data Driver
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Benefits
Reduce “digital out of stocks”
Visibility of product for brands, e-commerce sites, social media providers, mobile apps
Improved SEO for all
Support product variations, and frequent changes, without disrupting existing GTIN allocation processes
Improved consumer search (product discovery/categorization)
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