Over the last month or so, Phorm has faced quite a bit of scrutiny. The London-based company has partnered with a number of major British ISPs (British Telecom, Virgin Media and Talk Talk) to track the websites people visit in order to serve more precisely targeted ads. Of course, the digital privacy sirens were sounded full blast at first mention of this joint venture. Phorm argues their “technology doesn’t store any personally identifiable information or IP addresses”. Their site explains that a “random number” is assigned to each user and it’s impossible to connect that number back to a person’s identity. But we all know what happened to No. 4417749. If AOL’s fiasco taught us anything, it’s that the information being associated with these random numbers can frequently contain more information about an identity than the information being concealed by the random number in the first place.
Similar to the Phorm/BT partnership, Charter Communications, the fourth-largest cable operator in the US, announced this week that they’ll be tracking every site their customers visit and selling that data to ad-placement company NebuAd. What I think people find so objectionable with Phorm and NebuAd is they don’t seem to be offering anything of much value back to the consumer. If they were somehow enabling free/cheaper internet access (a la NetZero of the late-90s) or offering any sort of service of value that’s not strictly ad related, it might be a completely different story. But all they seem to be doing is introducing a privacy risk for what will most likely amount to a negligible increase in advertising relevance.
Anyhow, more interestingly, it’s time for me to ask my favorite question: What changes once a handful of ISPs begin tracking everything people look at online, when everything is recorded? The first behavioral response to Phorm’s technology has appeared in the form of software called AntiPhormLite…continue reading »
I’ve only just started digging into Grand Theft Auto IV, so I’m not gonna offer much of a review here; but I thought I would throw out a couple early notes…
With Rockstar’s decision to model the game world after New York City, the one thing myself and many others were eager to learn was how the GTA experience would differ for those already familiar with NYC. What I’m finding is that Liberty City doesn’t build on any functional understanding of New York as much as it appeals to my emotional appreciation for it. It’s very much an artistic impression – “it’s like a painting” as a friend put it.
However, with that said, the environment’s intricate detail and unbelievable richness demands comparison and inspection. And the first thing I did upon setting foot in Broker, Liberty City’s answer to Brookyln, was hijack a car and attempt to connect landmarks, streets and neighborhoods to their real-world counterparts. There are plenty of connections to make, almost all with a brilliant satirical twist; however, Rockstar understandably, though disappointingly, resisted the temptation of mirroring the exact layout and geography of Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs. All the major parks, monuments, bridges and buildings have their place, but you won’t find yourself killing drug dealers outside your local bodega at any point in the game. continue reading »
So there’s the widely accepted assumption that the future of online advertising lies in profile-based targeting. The thought being that people don’t hate advertising, they hate irrelevance. And maybe, just maybe, if enough information is gathered about an individual, a precisely targeted ad will transcend into some sort of enlightened state of personalized, peer recommendation – leaving behind the delusion of disruptive marketing
Well, we’re starting to catch glimpses of just how complicated advertising nirvana will be. Last week the New York Times ran a story about Google’s latest search result enhancement:
This month, the company introduced a search-within-search feature that lets users stay on Google to find pages on popular sites like those of The Washington Post,Wikipedia, The New York Times, Wal -Mart and others. The search box appears when someone enters the name of certain Web addresses or company names — say, “Best Buy” — rather than entering a request like “cellphones.”
So if users are going to be searching for content, no matter where, Serge and Larry would like they them to be using Google. Makes sense. But wait! continue reading »
Now that Facebook’s Beacon has had a couple months to lead its ad-partners’ ships into the unknown shoals of social advertising, it might be worthwhile to attempt better understanding why Zuckerberg’s once-a-century, “less commercial” ad program seems so ill-fated. To be clear, I don’t think Beacon’s underlying concept is inherently flawed. In fact, I’m fairly certain in the near-future we’ll see a more successful version of Beacon appear elsewhere – or maybe even on Facebook. But with that said, I don’t see any chance of Beacon’s current incarnation taking hold without some restructuring of Facebook’s mechanics. I’m not exactly breaking new ground with my forecast of Beacon’s impending failure, but all the explanations I’ve come across have been fairly shallow – citing an intrusiveness of advertising or breach of privacy. I think it’s important to realize that these are just the effects of Beacon’s poor implementation, not the causes. I believe cause to be something I’ve been referring to as the “signal vs. noise” problem in social networking. Lemme explain…
Based on the successes of its predecessors, Facebook crafted an information ecosystem in which it’s desirable to have as many friends as possible. Not surprising. When trying to build a social network, it certainly seems sensible to incentivize the primary form of investment users make in the network. However, the natural consequence of this dynamic is that the large majority of Facebook friendships exist at the edges of real-world social networks. That is most Facebook friendships are in fact just acquaintances. The introduction of the News Feed and Mini-Feed gave these edge relationships a daily presence. Here we see the first instance of the signal vs. noise issue. With each friendship given equal weight, the large majority of items populating the News Feed are generated by fringe friends. The News Feed’s “signal” is drowned out by “noise” broadcast from the edge. In theory, the excessive noise should have driven users to terminate some of these auxiliary relationships. But it didn’t. And if I had to wager, I’d bet it’s because users are already familiar with the day-to-day activity of their real friends, and it’s the fringe broadcasts that are actually equally valuable. The desire to carefully monitor the periphery of one’s social network shouldn’t come unexpected. It’s induced by the same voyeurism that was tapped to encourage amassing hundreds of friends in order to gain access to media hidden by Facebook’s privacy controls. I think it’s this balance of private information and public broadcasts that drove Facebook’s astounding growth. Enter Beacon. continue reading »
Ever since seeing For All Mankind for the first time, I’ve always heard Eno’s An Ending (Ascent) in my mind when seeing scenes from space. And though Converse has totally comprimised the purity of that association with their latest ad for Dwayne Wade, I’m willing to let it slide. Somehow Bob Marley seems to make perfect sense halfway between Earth and the Moon. The video above is actually the music visualizer on the Sony PS3. Genius.
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