A Setback for ISP Web Tracking

angelheaded tips a Wired story about the resignation of Bob Dykes, CEO of net eavesdropping firm NebuAd. NebuAd has encountered financial troubles lately as the privacy controversy surrounding the company's tracking methods has driven communications companies away. Over in the UK, Phorm responded to the NebuAd news by affirming that it is making progress with its advertising methods. From The Register: "In response to the outcry over our revealing its two secret trials, BT said in April it would re-engineer the planned deployment so traffic to and from customers who do not want their web use profiled for marketing purposes would not come into contact with the Phorm system. The original blueprint meant that a opt-out cookie would tell the technology to simply ignore refuseniks' browsing as it passed through. It's thought the change has proved tricky. Phorm did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged technical problems, but [BT's chief press officer Adam Liversage] said: 'We have been working on some things with Phorm.'"

Comments

They have been discussing

[Anonymous Coward]

who is going to prison for tapping 18,000 people
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/05/bt_phorm_police_meeting/

this is not including the private actions they will be facing for copyright infrigement, insider trading, fraud

Re:Why...

[Adambomb]

Actually, I think thats more of a problem of scale. The larger user base you have, the less consumers think of contributing in the name of good will as "ahh they're doing alright" (and in some cases, that'd be valid to say).

I'm not saying that such a business model would not be profitable, i'm just saying most businesses see it as a diminishing returns kind of model. It will get them to a certain point of profitability but then probably stay there, which is not the kind of thing shareholders want to hear. For someone making a living while producing what they like, this is great. Hell, you could even run a nice private business that way and people would love it so long as you juggled properly. When the words "publicly traded" get into the picture though...well...you wont be hearing the words "eh, we're comfortable with this level of profit. Lets stick with this".

Of course this is not an excuse; It's simply a reason, but I do think it is why we do not see this kind of model being used in more large scale groups.