Slashdot Mirror
TiVo Watches the Super Bowl
Boone^ writes: "While millions of people were seeing a tremendous football game, TiVo was busy collecting statistics about the Super Bowl viewing habits of its subscribers. Based on a random sampling of 10,000 of the 280,000 subscribers, they found out that Pepsi/Britney was the subject of the most replayed Ad(s), and not surprisingly the play that got the most attention was Vinatieri's game-winning FG."
Clearly the whole point of the survey was for them to say "Hey advertisers! Look! This technology is a GOOD thing for you, not a BAD thing."
Of course, one of the reasons people watch the Superbowl is FOR the ads. I don't think I've ever watched a single ad when fast-forwarding through Battle-Bots.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Actually, this is a little misleading. While I have no doubt that a large number of people watch the game for the ads, the survey is skewered towards TiVO owners, not the Super Bowl watching population at large. While nowhere near the same of importance, it's the same factor that lead to the "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline (the headline was predicted based on a phone survey, one of the first of it's kind. Since few had telephones, except for the rich, the survey skewered towards their tastes, which was for Dewey.)
Beware typoes.
Just to elaborate on the other responses...
Tivo gave us a VERY detailed message about this... along with a very easy opt-out system. They outlined that the information being collected was purely statistical and would not be linked to an individual user. I thought they handled it well.
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I don't want to hear it if you a) don't have a Tivo and b) haven't looked into what exact data they collect.
Privacy people tend to get all spazzy on here, and work everyone else up into a tizzy, and in the case of Tivo, its not even remotely warranted.
This sort of thing is what keeps Tivo going. This is a new market and it takes a long time to start breaking even. I have zero problem with Tivo doing this, if it allows me to continue using their service which, frankly, I can't imagine having to do without.
Tivo has been a company that from day one has been extremely concerned about privacy rights, and open communication with their users. If you spend any time browsing the Tivo forums at http://www.tivocommunity.com you'll see that not only do they have a powerful support presense, they are very open about what they collect, how its analyzed, and how its sold. People in the underground community independantly verified what they were saying.
So, basically, everyone relax. Step away from the keyboard, and go unpause Jerry Springer on the Tivo. That's where the real excitement is, not here.
Amen. This is the same argument I was going for in this thread.
Apparently, this sort of data collection is OK, because TiVos are 'cool' and PVR technology needs to be fostered. I totally agree that they are, but so is Windows Media Player (IMHO). If it sent filenames back to Microsoft of all streams I watched, but let you opt out of it, the same people defending TiVo would be quite literally foaming at the mouth.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
A. you can opt out of data collection if you want (you did read the manual right?)
B. they don't log 'mr. x has watched the slashdot show' they log 'someone in zipcode 1234 has watched the slashdot show'
Oh, and I just "discovered" the other day that some http servers actually these things called refer logs, that not only log your IP and what page you're visiting but where you came from; in some cases being able to detect search engine keywords used to get to that page. Given the fact that they could call up your ISP and request modem and customer information it's possible that they could do a heck of alot more damage than knowing you're a grown man who still watches teletubbies.
(...but since this is slashdot we'll completely ignore anything factual)
- MbM