TiVo To Sell Customer Data

camusflage writes "Yahoo has a story that details TiVo's plans to sell customer data to advertisers and broadcasters. While individuals will be anonymous, data will be made available in aggregate form, including ZIP code. The San Jose Mercury News has additional coverage on the news."

Comments

I'm tired of this

[Palshife]

Read the privacy policy. It's been around since TiVo was founded, and nothing in that time has changed.

TiVo has been selling your demographic data for years. Superbowl advertisers bought information from TiVo to see which Brittney Spears commercial got the most replay and in which kinds of households.

This has absolutely nothing to do with an infrigement of rights, as it all strictly adheres to an agreement between customer and provider made fully clear at the time of purchase.

To offset the costs of building and maintaining a complicated system that provides an excellent service to consumers they sell information on their demographics. Anyone wanna tell me how that makes them evil all of a sudden?

Re:Good for us

[PD]

Mod that up. I hope that TiVo sells its data, because then some people who lack cluesticks might suddenly get one. I want TV execs to know that I watch shows like Babylon 5, Star Trek, stuff on TechTV, and so on. But so far, most of what they give us is "The Golden Girls" in a thousand different variants. Anything that lets someone know what I personally watch is a good thing.

stick it to the Nielsens...

[The Lynxpro]

Actually, TiVo reporting the aggregate viewing statistics was a *compelling feature* of the service to me. I HATE (repeat after me, HATE) the Nielsen's. I do not believe 6,000 homes accurately reflects the television viewership of this nation, especially when it depends on those people sitting down and logging their viewing experience in a journal. There have been far too many good television shows cancelled because the Nielsen "families" didn't watch it or chose to record it on their VCRs. There are 700,000 + TiVo subscribers versus 6,000 Nielsen homes. You tell me which one will have better statistics. Even if the Nielsens actually represent a larger overall base of the American market, the TiVo subscribers will actually represent the groups advertisers want to reach anyway (tech savvy Gen X and Gen Y, and babyboomers with money). Now if I could just do a total "thumbs down" to all of Cal Worthington's ads I'd be a happy camper...