Back at the end of March, I attended O’Reilly‘s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. As usual with the O’Reilly brand of conferences it was a slick, show-bizzy affair. The plenary sessions were fast-paced with generic techno soundtracks, theatrical lighting and spectacular attempts at buzz-generation. Despite their best efforts, the staging seems to overhwelm the Droopy Dog-like presenters who tend to be more at home coding in darkened rooms whilst gorging themselves on Red Bull and cookies. Even the audience seemed to prefer the company of their smartphones or iPads than any actual human interaction with “live tweets” being the preferred method of communication.

In any event, the conference is usually interesting and a few nuggets are typically extracted from the superficial, mostly promotional aspects of the presentations.

What was clear was that every start-up and every business plan was keyed on data collection. Data collection about YOU. The more – the better. The goal was to learn as much about you as possible so as to be able to sell you stuff. Even better – to sell you stuff that was so in tune with your desires that you would be helpless to resist purchasing it.

The trick was – how to get you to cough up that precious data? Some sites just assumed you’d be OK with spending a few days answering questions and volunteering information – apparently just for the sheer joy of it. Others believed that being up-front and admitting that you were going to be sucked into a vortex of unrelenting and irresistable consumption would be reward enough. Still others felt that they ought to offer you some valuable service in return. Most often, this service, oddly enough, was financial planning and retirement saving-based.

The other thing that was interesting (and perhaps obvious) was that data collection is usually pretty easy (at least the basic stuff). Getting details is harder and most folks do expect something in return. And, of course, the hardest part is the data mining to extract the information that would provide the most compelling sales pitch to you.

There are all sorts of ways to build the case around your apparent desires. By finding out where you live or where you are, they can suggest things “like” other things you have already that are nearby. (You sure seem to like Lady Gaga, you know there’s a meat dress shoppe around the corner…) By finding out who your friends are and what they like, they can apply peer-pressure-based recommendations (All of your friends are downloading the new Justin Beiber recording. Why aren’t you?). And by finding out about your family and demographic information they can suggest what you need or ought to be needing soon (You son’s 16th birthday is coming up soon, how about a new car for him?).

Of all the sites and ideas, it seems to me that Intuit‘s Mint is the most interesting. Mint is an on-line financial planning and management site. Sort of like Quicken but online. To “hook” you, their key idea is to offer you the tease of the most valuable analysis with the minimum of initial information. It’s almost like given your email and zip code they’ll draw up a basic profile of you and your lifestyle. Give them a bit more and they’ll make it better. And so you get sucked in but you get value for your data. They do claim to keep the data separate from you but they also do collect demographically filtered data and likely geographically filtered data.

This really isn’t news. facebook understood this years ago when their ill-fated Beacon campaign was launched. This probably would have been better accepted had it been rolled out more sensitively. But it is ultimately where everyone is stampeding right now.

The most interesting thing is that there is already a huge amount of personal data on the web. It is protected because it’s all in different places and not associated. facebook has all of your friends and acquaintances. Amazon and eBay have a lot about what you like and what you buy. Google has what you’re interested in (and if you have an Android phone – where you go). Apple has a lot about where you go and who you talk to and also through your app selection what you like and are interested in. LinkedIn has your professional associations. And, of course, twitter has when you go to the bathroom and what kind of muffins you eat.

Each of these giants is trying to expand their reservoir of data about you. Other giants are trying to figure out how to get a piece of that action (Yahoo!, Microsoft). And yet others, are trying to sell missing bits of information to these players. Credit card companies are making their vast purchasing databases available, specialty retailers are trying to cash in, cell phone service providers are muscling in as well. They each have a little piece of your puzzle to make analysis more accurate.

The expectations is that there will be acceptance of diminishing privacy and some sort of belief that the holders of these vast databases will be benevolent and secure and not require government intervention. Technologically, storage and retrieval will need to be addressed and newer, faster algorithms for analysis will need to be developed.

Looking for a job…or a powerful patent? I say look here.