Message from Michael - Privacy vs Personalization - November 30, 2010

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        November 30, 2010                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

      PRIVACY VERSUS PERSONALIZATION

      I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY

      BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID

      LOST IN SPACE

      COCKTAIL CHATTER – VIRTUAL DIVA

 

 

      PRIVACY VERSUS PERSONALIZATION:  It may be “THE” issue of the coming decade for new media.  How do you balance the two.  Two federal agencies are expected to issue two separate reports, or recommendations.  The Federal Trade Commission report is expected to come down on the side of consumers; The U.S. Commerce Department report is expected to come down on the side of business.  President Barrack Obama is expected to appoint a “privacy Czar.”  The European Commission is overhauling its ‘data protection rules’ for consumers after concerns were raised about Facebook and Google and because of social networking growth and “personalized advertising.”  The Federal Trade Commission recently closed its investigation into Google’s Street View system that raised concerns in Europe and, in particular, Germany.  Facebook faces accusations from a variety of groups that it turned ‘data-mined information’ to advertisers.  At the recent Web 2.0 conference, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg called privacy “a grey area… (and) not completely a black-and-white thing.” 

TWO INCIDENTS – ONE QUESTION:  You’ve all had the experience of going to a website and getting a pop-up that locates you in your town.  Something like, “hi, Michael, here are some things in Athens.”  And, no, I wasn’t using any of the location-based social networking sites like Gowalla or FourSquare.  And, yes, we understand that our IP address identifies our location.  But how about this?   A friend of mine, Al H., sent an article about fake news to some of his friends.  He didn’t send it to me, but I know about it anyway.  Another colleague, Jim S., sent out an article about the Dead Sea Scrolls.  He didn’t send it to me, but I know about it as well.  Why?  Because I went to The Washington Post website to read an article, and there on the right hand side of the page was a list of all my “friends’ activities” – articles from the Post website that they had shared with others.  I e-mail Al regularly.  I haven’t e-mailed Jim in months.  As for Terra, (no, I didn’t mention her, but she came up as well) I have not communicated with her in years.  Yet, the Post website tells me what they’re doing on its website. 

PERSONAL ANECDOTES:  Are a debatable form of evidence, but here is a more concrete incident:  British insurer Aviva decided to take a different approach to deciding whether 60,000 life insurance applicants at its U.S. subsidiary were a ‘suitable risk.’  Instead of the usual questionnaires and medical tests , the company used a ‘predictive modeling’ formula based on people’s ‘consumer marketing data’, such as magazine subscriptions, shopping details, catalog purchases, leisure activities indicated by online activity, and, of course, social networking site information.  The results, according to the report in The Wall Street Journal, were “persuasive in its ability to mimic traditional techniques.”  Or, put another way, there is enough online information for insurers to figure out your lifestyle, habits, all that says about you and whether you’re a good insurance risk.  Somewhat disconcerting, a spokesman for my own insurance company, USAA Life Insurance, which is one of the more conservative insurance companies in America, said the “methodology is sound.”  The insurance company (ies) are careful to say the data isn’t being used for a final decision (in brackets – yet), but only as a filter. 

As one insurance consultant put it, people need to realize that “they are significantly increasing their personal transparency… (and that) it’s all public and it’s all electronically mineable.”  The point is that every time you go online, you leave behind ‘digital bread crumbs,’ some intentional, some unintentional.  When it’s intentional, it’s personalization; When it’s unintentional it’s a potential portal to your privacy.  But in either case they lead back to you.  And that ends today’s editorial.  Now, on to the news.

      I READ THE NEWS TODAY, OH BOY:   And who better to talk about 400 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire, than Twitter.  Several media websites and services are speculating (or reporting, depending on how you look at it) that the microblogging site, which has been cited as a source in several major news stories, is looking at a ‘Twitter News Service.’  Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told Reuters about the idea of a ‘partnership’ with news organizations, only to have the ‘official’ Twitter spokes-person later say he was just being imaginative.  Part of the ‘speculation’ came from the Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford conference in which Stone also raised the question and where he also said that the service, valued at $1 Billion, was not for sale for $4 Billion or $5 Billion.  Several sites also note Twitter’s own blog two years ago about the Los Angeles earthquake in which it was four minutes ahead of the local television news station and nine minutes ahead of Associated Press.  In that same blog, Twitter referred to itself as a “personal news service.”  Faithful Message readers can probably cite several other instances – from Mumbai to Haiti to Iran -- in which Twitter tweets played a key role.  As a footnote to this, it should be pointed out that Twitter-ites’ (Yes, I just made up the name) refer to the service as an ‘information network’ not a ‘social network’… for what that’s worth.

      BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID:  All you traditional news media companies.  Yahoo is coming to get you… with an army of 400,000 ‘contributors.’  In May of this year, Yahoo bought Associated Content, a ‘custom content’ provider for $100 Million.  Regular readers will remember previous Messages about so-called custom content, or custom publishing, or what some critics derisively call ‘content farms’ in which content is created primarily as a driver for advertising.  Now, Yahoo will act as the coordinator of all such content and the contributors, to produce material for its various websites and partner websites.  As the headline in Advertising Age succinctly put it, “Yahoo cranks up Content Machine.”  And a content machine it is.  The other two major custom content groups are Demand Media and Examiner.  Coincidentally, and, depending on your point of view, another reason to be afraid, another article in Advertising Age, tells the story of a former assistant at a car dealership who turned to writing for Examiner after being laid off.  She reportedly made $100,000 in the past year.  Pretty remarkable under any circumstances, but especially with the content farms which pay an upfront fee of anywhere from $2 to $50 per article with an additional $1 to $5 for every additional thousand page views generated.  The secret to her success?  Writing about celebrities like Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift, along with Dancing with the Stars, and DisneyLand.  As a ‘positive’ aside to this, search giant Google is planning to introduce a ‘source tag’ system into its search engine so that the original URL, or originating source, of an article can be properly cited.   As a PS, I always wondered where the phrase in the headline comes from.  The answer is the movie, The Fly, with Jeff Goldblum.

      LOST IN SPACE:  It was only 18 minutes, but for that brief time earlier this year, one-seventh of the entire world Internet traffic, including major U.S. corporations and U.S. government agencies, was re-routed through China, according to a China-US technology group and MIT’s Technology Review.  Experts still debate whether it was intentional or unintentional – an accidental ‘hijacking.’  China’s state-owned ISP, China Telecom, says it was an accident:  a quirk caused by a small Chinese ISP updating its routing information.  Regular readers of the Message will remember a similar incident two years ago in which Pakistan’s state-owned telecommunications company managed to take YouTube off the entire world wide web for two solid hours on a Sunday afternoon.  Again, there is the question whether it was intentional or unintentional.   

      COCKTAIL CHATTER: Three state schools in Britain are outsourcing the teaching of math to India.  According to an article in the technology section of The New York Times, London-based Brightspark Education started the outsourcing program using 100 teachers in the Punjab as an alternative to private tutors, allowing the students to go online to get their lessons.  The reason?  Of course, it’s cheaper.  Look out, Lady Gaga.  The latest pop sensation is a 3-dimensional hologram that packs the concert halls in Japan.  Robot and Artificial Intelligence website SingularityHub.com reports that Hatsune Miku is the creation of  Crypton Future Media and uses vocal synthesis software and visual projection to put the ‘virtual diva’ on stage, backed up by a real-life band. You can see her perform (where else) on YouTube.  Click on the “World Is Mine” video which actually shows her in concert.     

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