Here’s the problem as I see it. Companies are letting you store information that they’re giving you — information you could get anyway — and telling you it’s yours. No, it isn’t. It’s yours if you had a hand in creating it, or some vested stake in it, or some part in the conversation.

In some cases you do have that. MyStarbucks Idea is a place for consumers to kvetch or just make suggestions. And you can immerse yourself in a “subtly branded experience” on myCoke.

But in a lot of cases, it’s still about the company addressing you, and maybe you getting to make a comment or two. Just because you use the prefix “my” doesn’t mean you care about consumers, just like using the prefix “i” doesn’t mean you put the care into your product that Apple does.

It helps as a signifier, sure, but it also smacks of opportunism (a point noted in the NYT article). And face facts, the kids are moving away from MySpace. It’s still popular, sure, but if we’re really trying to reach the younger demographic, we need to appeal to them, not appeal to what they used to like.

Tom Altman (and others) keep saying that the ideal is to give people a place to have a conversation. Some people have coined the term “wedia” and I like that, although it’s not very euphonious. How about “our”? Our___ could have a nice ring to it.

But rather than picking out a prefix of any kind, how about actually giving users a place to have a conversation, to contribute and to get the content they want?

Now Polaroid pictures weren’t the best, but a lot of people my age and older grew up with snapshots whirring from the front of a camera and slowly developing into view. When digital cameras came onto the scene, Polaroid stuck to its guns and thought the marketshare it had was permanent. It wasn’t, of course.

Sound familiar?

After some painful reorganization, it kept producing it’s standby product, but diversified, too. Layoffs kept coming, and I think you’d have a hard time finding an analyst telling you to buy Polaroid stock. The idea seemed sound. Keep producing film for artists and people who for whatever reason don’t want to use digital cameras, and branch out. But the niche Polaroid was trying to fill wasn’t profitable.

Now they’re coming up with new products, including a portable printer that connects to your cellphone’s camera and can print a 2×3 picture. Not that they asked me, but I’m not sold on the idea. It has some value as a novelty, but you can look at the picture on the screen, and most people are content doing that. But it’s a good experiment.

The analyst at the end of the NYT article has a good quote, and one that everyone involved in innovation in any business should bear in mind:

However ingenious the process, Mr. Hoffenberg of Lyra said, people might still not be tempted to convert camera clicks into prints.

“Potential markets can exist because they aren’t tapped, but also because they aren’t actually a market,” he said. “It’s not always evident up front which is the case.”

Newspapers have long acted the way Polaroid did, but are branching out. They can’t wait any longer, though. Polaroid is a good example of what could happen if they did.

More tomorrow