Jaiku Bought By Google, Some Fear Privacy Issues

Platonic writes "According to the New York Times, Google's recent purchase of Jaiku, a little-known micro-blog service (think Twitter) might raise privacy concerns due to the automated nature of the web site's services. From the article: "The deal, announced this month, has much of the tech-tracking blogosphere abuzz. Some claim it is the harbinger of a new, truly interconnected world, where a chunk of our existence will migrate online ... Chris Messina, an open-source entrepreneur and founder of the consulting firm Citizen Agency, takes it a step further. In a blog post after the Jaiku deal was announced, he said that he envisioned a world where all information had migrated online, where the address book "lives in Googleland,"'"

Comments

So what? Huh?

[decipher_saint]

For those who were as baffled as I at first FTA:

Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, described the service as a "holistic view of a person's life," rather than just short posts. "We extract a lot of information automatically, especially from mobile phones," Mr. Koponen said from Mountain View, Calif., where the company is being integrated into Google. "This kind of information paints a picture of what a person is thinking or doing."

So this tool automatically gathers little scraps of information about a user and draws lines between what it thinks are logical connections (like any good tinfoil hat aficionado might do in a dank basement) into some sort of tag cloud for that user. Ostensibly the use is used by applications as a sort of "stuff about you" repository, so maybe in one application you set your default home address as something when you go to use an application that requires your home address it could dip into that repository and insert it for you.

The pro: It's like having an assistant
The con: It's like having an assistant who works for the FBI

YRO Ad Libs!

[R2.0]

_________ (random company)bought by Google, ____________ (some random blogger) fears _______________ (some wild ass speculation).

Weak article.

[kebes]

I usually avoid commenting on how bad an article is, but TFA was frustratingly fluffy. I had to read halfway through before even having a vague idea what the company in question actually does. To save others the trouble, allow me to condense the article down into only the meaningful sentences:

Google [acquired] Jaiku, a small Finnish start-up active in the obscure field of microblogging ... Petteri Koponen, one of the two founders of Jaiku, [said] "We extract ... information automatically, especially from mobile phones" ... In practical terms, Jaiku's mobile application allows users to broadcast not only their whereabouts, but how the phone is being used, even what kind of music it is playing. ... a live diary, constantly updated so that we can see, on our cellphones, where our contacts are and what they are doing.

And the worry is, apparently, that this kind of live updating information (via mobile devices) will be an invasion of privacy. Of course it will be. But, people will learn what intrusions they are willing to tolerate, and take it from there. Take Facebook as an example: many people put all kinds of personal details on their profile. Others set their privacy settings quite high, so only their closest friends can see anything. Others don't use Facebook at all. At the end of the day, users will simply activate features to the extent that they find them useful. A close-knit group of friends might quite enjoy keeping track of each other so that they can meet up at a concert. Privacy-conscious people will disable all those features, of course. Most people will learn enough about the interface to activate/deactivate these features as desired.

I understand the danger of having a single company (Google in this case) having easy access to comprehensive data about your life (location, email records, search habits, etc.). And I firmly believe that people need to educate themselves about the dangers of releasing too much personal information. But I fail to see how this recent Google acquisition is cause for great concern. Mobile devices are increasingly useful. So are social networking tools. Merging the two is an obvious next step, and a step that Google is taking.

Re:Do your part, don't use Google

[tppublic]

"don't put things online if you don't want the world to know"

My concern has rarely been what I put online. It's what others put online about me that I can't control or remove.