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NY Times To Data-Mine Its Visitors

Posted by kdawson on from the et-tu-Grey-Lady? dept.

pilsner.urquell points out a story in the Village Voice from a stockholders' meeting at the New York Times. It seems that the media giant is now eager to data-mine visitors to its Web properties. Of course anybody with a site who profits from advertising is likely to be doing something of the sort. It's just a bit surprising that the Times would use the words "data mining" out loud in public. From the article: "Barely a year after their reporters won a Pulitzer prize for exposing data mining of ordinary citizens by a government spy agency, New York Times officials had some exciting news for stockholders last week: The Times company plans to do its own data mining of ordinary citizens, in the name of online profits... [T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you."

5 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    [T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you.

    So, how are we supposed to make Soviet Union jokes after this??

    1. Re:Obligatory?? by MrNaz · · Score: 2, Funny

      I never knew Nietzsche was Russian!

      --
      I hate printers.
    2. Re:Obligatory?? by Intron · · Score: 3, Funny

      "shows a lot of integrity"

      Except they didn't put it in an announcement to the website visitors, they announced to their stockholders that they planned to make more money.

      Anyway, I think everyone visiting the NYT site from now on should do a search for "elephant porn" and we'll see how that affects their advertising budget.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  2. Papers read you! by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Funny

    "[T]he problem with reading papers electronically is that they can also read you."
    Wow, a Soviet Russia joke directly in the summary!

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Re:Garbage In, Garbage Out by truthsearch · · Score: 3, Funny

    Gabrielle Carteris, is that you?

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    Developers: We can use your help.