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Cisco Social Software Lets You "Stalk" Customers

Posted by samzenpus on from the the-commercials-are-coming-from-inside-the-house dept.

coondoggie writes "Cisco this week unveiled software designed to let companies track customers and prospects on social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other public forums and sites. Cisco SocialMiner allows users to monitor status updates, forum posts and blogs of customers so they can be alerted of conversations related to their brand. The software is designed to not only enable enterprises to monitor the conversations of their customers but to engage those that require service, Cisco says."

13 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Excellent! by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now I won't have to remember my client's anniversaries, their kid's birthdays, when & where they go on vacation ... because they'll all fire me if they find out I'm stalking them.

  2. not stalking by BradleyUffner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    By posting to these kinds of social sites these people have indicated that they want to be heard. I wouldn't call it stalking if you are doing exactly what the "target" is asking you to do.

    1. Re:not stalking by Kenja · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yup, if you dont want people to know the information, dont post it publicly. Seems simple enough to me.

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    2. Re:not stalking by causality · · Score: 5, Insightful

      By posting to these kinds of social sites these people have indicated that they want to be heard. I wouldn't call it stalking if you are doing exactly what the "target" is asking you to do.

      Asking to be heard is not the same thing as asking to be rigorously recorded, classified, categorized, and persistently contacted. You might be posting to Slashdot, a public Web site, but that doesn't mean you want every reader of your post to visit your home and knock on your door so they can hear you some more. Or at least, the assumption should be that you don't want that until and unless you say otherwise. So there are degrees to this, which also means there are reasonable levels and then there are extremes.

      As an analogy, think of free speech. It has certain limitations. Within reason, you can say whatever you want in the USA because of the First Amendment. However, you may not just shout "FIRE!" in a theater when there is no fire, for example, because the harm this can cause outweighs your right to do it.

      I think your rationale should also have reasonable limitations. Yes, you're posting in public to a social networking site. So does that mean anything goes? Any possible use or abuse of said postings are perfectly okay and should occur without any limitations whatsoever? Or is the right to access public information a right that should also have a few limits placed on how it is exercised?

      I will say that if everyone understood the full power of tracking, monitoring, and database technology and knew with 100% certainty that it was going to be used against them every time they posted anything to any Web site, it would definitely have a chilling effect. Is the convenience of a few corporations worth a chilling effect on the general population? I don't believe so, not even when the chilling effect is merely a possibility.

      For software and practices like what Cisco is promoting here, would it really be so unreasonable to legally require that they occur only with the fully informed consent of their targets and only on an opt-in basis? After all, if people really want this to happen then getting them to opt-in should be no problem. If inalienable, fundamental human rights can have reasonable limitations, why not the practice of tracking people who did not ask to be tracked?

      --
      It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
    3. Re:not stalking by EveLibertine · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yup, if you dont want people to know the information, dont post it publicly. Seems simple enough to me.

      So if I don't want to get stalked I... shouldn't go outside?

  3. 'service' should be in special quotes by jdogalt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "The software is designed to not only enable enterprises to monitor the conversations of their customers but to engage those that require service, Cisco says"

    I think to get the creepiness quotient expressed properly, 'service' should be in special quotes there.

    1. Re:'service' should be in special quotes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I'll be damned if someone services my wife!

      More precisely, you'll be cuckolded if someone services your wife.

  4. Doesn't matter to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As if I needed another reason to not have a facebook account. If there's not an anonymous option I just create a temporary fake account for whatever forum I'm wanting to comment on and then forget it. I have more hotmail, yahoo and gmail accounts than I can count. In the last 15 years I'll bet I've used hundreds of temp accounts.

  5. Caveat emptor by goodmanj · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Rule #1 of buying stuff: the vendor is not your "friend", on Facebook or otherwise.

  6. Re:Consequences? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    What he's talking about is far beyond astroturfing.

    It seems more akin to "Agent Orange-ing", no?

  7. Only thing new is the Cisco product by IBBoard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think the only new thing here is that Cisco has made a product out of it. I know of services that have done this before.

    Personally, I don't like it. If I want the company to try to sweet-talk me into thinking their wonderfully fantastic then I'd contact them. If I wanted a problem solved then I'd try their tech support. If it isn't something that either of them can help with (like "how do you do X?" or "which are the best drivers for Linux?" or "this is terrible, has anyone else had the same problem?") then it goes somewhere public and I sure as hell don't want someone trying to astroturf the situation.

  8. Huh? Tech support via twitter? by bradley13 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Are you serious? People expect companies to provide tech support via twitter? Maybe I'm getting to be an old fogey, but that strikes me as just plain weird... What do others think?

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
  9. Re:Are CISCO crazy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Sending information over unsecured wifi into public space and sending information into a public webspace are effectively the same thing. Data is data. Why should it be different just because it's in the form of EMR rather than magnetic data on a server?

    That said, this is still creepy. Illegal? Dunno, IANAL. But it's just as creepy as someone who goes to the public library and cuts out every news article containing you, follows you and takes pictures of you while you're walking down the street, notes every store you go into, and rummages through your garbage to get your receipts, and then puts it all in a scrapbook. All of those things are legal (with the possible exception of the pictures, again, IANAL), but dangit is it creepy.