Cisco Social Software Lets You "Stalk" Customers

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."

Comments

Excellent!

[WrongSizeGlass]

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.

Consequences?

[MachDelta]

Awesome. So tell me, what happens when companies start to use this to toss around defamation lawsuits (RIAA style) to squash negative opinions of their product(s)?
Won't someone think of the Apple-haters?!

not stalking

[BradleyUffner]

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.

Re:not stalking

[causality]

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?

'service' should be in special quotes

[jdogalt]

"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.

Doesn't matter to me

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Doesn't matter to me

[ScrewMaster]

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.

I've run my own mail server for, well, probably close to twenty years now, and I just create addresses like "junk0001", "junk0002", etc. whenever I create an account on a site or forum that I don't trust. That also lets me see who is actually selling my personal information, and lets me easily block any spam that results. It's remarkable how many sites that claim "we don't sell or release any of your personal information to any third parties" do exactly that as soon as you click the SUBMIT button. I've literally had spam appear in my inbox from some of these throwaway accounts within minutes of my signing up for some forum or other. Everything from payday loan offers to V!agka. Fuckers.

I agree with you about Facebook. I don't have an account and am not ever likely to have one.