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Why Web 2.0 Will End Your Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "This is a pretty good insight into some of the dangers of social networking and website customisation -- marketing and loss of privacy. When marketeers know who your friends are and what you are all into, it makes their advertising a lot more effective. From the article: "Why are the companies worth so much money? Why is MySpace worth over half a billion dollars without a proper revenue model? Why is Digg allegedly pitched at over $20m (at the last count) without any idea of where money is going to be pulled from? The answer is - data. Information. Marketing. Every detail about you and me. That is where the money is."
Stories like this remind me of why I don't get involved in "social networking" and all that mess. The closest anyone can come to knowing anything about me is by tracking my book purchases, which are all IT-related. There is an alarming amount of information about us available to a lot of people right now, I don't understand why so many people are so quick to jump out there and put their entire lives on the internet.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Pervasive advertising, no matter how relevant to my needs, gets a little annoying, but on the whole I'd rather pretty-much see Dell ads over "Get the Facts" any day.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Anyone who is part of WAYN, HI5, MySpace, Digg, Slashdot [has friends and foes too you know], Stumbleupon, or has blogrolls, is really set up to be data mined rather completely. Either you have to not give a rat's patootie and do it anyway [like I do with some services], or you wear your foil hat and react with hostility to every "Hi :-)" email you get from a distant friend.
If you have matured and realize you really don't NEED that SUV, or Sony laptop to have a high quality daily life, then targetted marketing won't matter. But if you're letting your 10 year old play on the Internet, you should really wonder what Mattel and Disney/ABC knows about your child by now.
Oh You POS
The article is talking about sites where you put information about yourself- myspace, facebook, etc., and how they're worth so much- because of how much infromation people will give out about themselves.
Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia, that can be edited anonymously, without ads. So few are interested in buying it at an insane price.
I am not a journalist, but how do these guys get their credentials?
Have you seen the white house press briefings? Thats the same question I ask mysef whenever I watch one. Everyone there is too scared about loosing their seat than asking a hard hitting question or two...
Excellent Phoenix AZ Office Space - Thistle Landing
If you don't participate in this stuff you can't lose your privacy. I don't contribute, visit or have an account on any of the stuff that is mentioned. Why? Don't care. I use the web in the way I want, not the way the advertisers think I should.
Just as if you clear your cookies every time you're done surfing the marketers will always treat you as a new visitor even if you visit every day. In other words, the sites statistics are skewed and will burn money because of inflated figures.
Yeah sure, most people don't care about privacy. Witness the reaction to people when you tell them that their phone messages might be recorded by the government or that the police can search their home without a warrant; "I have nothing to hide so what's the big deal?"
Yet, amazingly, people are paranoid about identity theft. Um folks, just how do you think some of you lost your identity? Naw, it couldn't have been that long winded, detailed bio you posted on MySpace now could it? You know, the one where you posted your first and last name, your hometown, what school you went/go to, where you hang out and all the other useless cruft that people just have to know about you.
While the author does have a point, data mining is the new wave in online transactions, if people don't participate the advertisers will just be burning money for little reward.
Kind of like commercials. I don't watch/listen/read them so the money that is spent to get me to buy a product or service is wasted.
Don't want to lose your privacy? Don't participate in things that could affect you in that way. It's that simple.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Part of the definition of Web 2.0 is traditionally, "social networking, user-contributed content, etc". Building your sites not to run off YOUR content, but building it to run off user-submitted content, and user-created connections. I'd guess that's what the author is referencing. It's the more philosophical side of 2.0, separate from the technical details of asynchronous access and client-side functionality.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
Marketing works, even the stuff you hate. The problem is that these marketing companies are spending billions of dollars a year on researching and presenting new marketing techniques to sell you stuff you didn't know you needed. Then people have the smug arrogance to say, "Well, it doesn't effect me.". Really? Why then does the average American spend 103% of what they make? The truth is that marketing companies are very very good a getting you to think you need something and that somehow this company finally came out with what you are looking for. Whiter whites, iPods, new drugs, and a Coke. And the more data they can grab on what you do, the better they can get at making you need stuff. So you lie when people ask you for information? Well, a little thing called the laws of large numbers and demographics means that what you aren't saying about yourself, someone else is. Using even basic 101 level stats you can tell who is lieing and who is telling the truth once your sample size is big enough... and once the sample size is big enough they can pick out the truth and scrap the rest with the stroke of a key and come out with a probability of your profile, what products you would like and how you would like them presented. Maybe they aren't quite their yet, but this isn't sci-fi, this is just basic stats.