NY Times To Data-Mine Its Visitors

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."

Comments

Data Mining and issue?

[rodney dill]

I'm not sure why there is such a concern over data mining. As long as the mining is done from public sources then I see no problem. If the mining is from medical records, government records that are sealed or presumed to be private, or some other protected database then is becomes an issue.

Re:Data Mining and issue?

[krbvroc1]

To quote the RIAA, think of it as stealing. Basically, in addition to already viewing advertisements, websites want to steal my Intellectual Property. See, there is a value placed on my data by the market, and that data is being collected and securitized without compensating me and in many cases without my permission.

Each of us own the Intellectual Property in our heads. Like the RIAA, we need to stick together and demand either payment or permission for this information.

Re:Obligatory??

[goombah99]

Wow an insightful pithy first post. I suppose that since I assume all commerical sites, especially free one, are data mining me and selling me out in anyway they can I'm not worried by this. In fact I think it shows a lot of integrity by the NY times to announce their intentions ahead of time as it can only be bad PR.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

[LMacG]

I have a login for the NYT. According to the information I provided, I'm a female born in 1901, living in ZIP code 90210.

(For the record, at least one of those data points is incorrect).

Its all in the terminology

[Grashnak]

If they said, "We'll be tailoring our site to the visitors' interests, thereby enhancing their experience", no one would care, but once they say "data-mining", suddenly everyone is screaming "OMFG, the NYT is like the NSA! WTF? Remember the constitution dude!"