Online advertising
Free services in exchange for information
The market has spoken; lots of netizens are willing to give away information in order to get online services instead of paying a subscription or monthly fee.
This business model needs to collect information in order to make better or more specifics ads and the way to do that is track the user to see what he is doing online, what he likes, to try and guess what he would be most likely to buy as an impulse like in the cashier at the supermarket.
But this raises disturbing doubts about privacy , I’ve always said that Google has already too much information about us, our friends and everything else to keep their “no evil” promise. And now that they’re going after Social networks with their OpenSocial and that this upstart Facebook is about to release a new advertising model that will rely on the information on your profile our information is out there ready to be grabbed by the highest bidder.
This might be less important depending on where you live, most web enterprises focus only in the United States and Europe so everyone else is left out and their info is not safe but no as interesting as their American or European peer’s to an online advertiser.
So this is the future, akin to George Orwell’s 1984 Big Brother is watching, because as we know, Huge corporations like Google and Microsoft are not the only ones collecting data for different reason and I think than Online advertising is the least of our worries.
Another problem rises with Social Networks, the goal of these networks is to meet people trough common interests and background, but if you are a member that keeps their info secret or only available to the people you already know you are ruining the purpose entirely.
It is easy to avoid cookies storing in our browser’s cache but how many of us actually do it?
I don’t like online ads but I see them as a necessary evil that allows some of the services I use to exist.
What I would really like to see these guys do in order to transform me into a better online customer is to make shopping online more secure so we avoid our nightmares with 14 year old hackers usisng our credit card numbers.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Cuando esto es una conversación, todos ganamos