09.27.07
Posted in Internet Business, Marketing, Opinions / Rants at 4:11 pm by Administrator
Social networks seems to be all buzz this year, and for good reason. There have been many social network startups, and many social network software platforms (and even more) arriving for would be myspace clones. Boing Boing has added commenting to their posts, and digg has recently added profile pages to their already social posting site. Yahoo recently launched it’s mash social network (wonder what is going to happen to the 360 social network they had started?). Google has added some kind of google dating search to their dating search results. Social, personal, user generated data, it’s all exploding everywhere, and many people do not know the privacy consequences of their postings.
Myspace recently announced that they will be better targeting ads to the individual based upon profile information. I for one am still interested to see stories coming out about further data mining things like bulletins and chain posts that often contain a lot of personal information, and some of those questionares appear to have a few questions of interest to insurance companies, more disclosure would be prudent I believe.
A recent article found via yahoo / AP:
By GARY GENTILE, AP Business Writer Tue Sep 18, 7:06 PM ET
LOS ANGELES - News Corp.’s MySpace social networking site is using personal details contained on users’ profile pages and blogs to sell highly targeted advertising, the company said Tuesday.
The Web site started the first phase of its “interest targeting” experiment in July, culling likes and dislikes from its users’ pages to sell ads in 10 broad categories such as finance, autos, fashion and music.
MySpace advertisers can now get much more than the basic demographic data contained in site registration forms, Peter Levinsohn, who heads Fox Interactive Media, told an investor conference.
The site has more than 3 million users in each category and can place ads based on responses to questions about users’ likes and dislikes, favorite movies and music. Data is even extracted from blog entries, where users write at length about their lives.
Targeting ads well can be lucrative for MySpace and its corporate parent, but it can also backfire if users believe their personal expressions are being misused.
When MySpace rival Facebook last year introduced a feature that allows users to more easily track changes their friends make to profiles, many users denounced it as stalking and threatened protests and boycotts. Facebook had to quickly apologize and agree to let users turn off the feature so that others can’t easily see what they do.
Levinsohn said MySpace would only use information users have freely expressed on their pages.
MySpace should inform users it is using their profile information to sell more targeted ads, Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a California-based nonprofit, said.
“Many young people don’t seem to have privacy protection instincts,” Givens said.
Levinsohn used the example of a user named “Jill” who identifies herself as a fashionista and wrote in her blog about the new fashion lineup.
“She even goes so far as telling us she needs new boots for the fall,” Levinsohn said. “How would you like to be an advertiser selling boots to her?”
Next, MySpace plans to broaden its categories so it can market ads for a movie such as “Fantastic Four,” for instance, to people who said they have an interest in comics, action films and even the film’s star, Jessica Alba.
“This is really just the beginning for us,” he said. “No one else in the marketplace can offer this kind of concentrated reach.”
At a conference in New York, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch remarked on the importance of creating categories for advertisers to buy on MySpace and vowed “to build it better than anybody.”
Sales of targeted ads could help Web sites earn more per ad sold. Earlier this year, Yahoo Inc. launched SmartAds, a platform for delivering customized display ads, while Time Warner Inc.’s AOL bought the behavioral-targeting company Tacoda.
The research company eMarketer projects that spending on behavioral targeting will nearly double to $1 billion next year and hit $3.8 billion by 2011.
Advertising is getting more targeted, but I have already seen some backlash in the form of people swearing to put all fake information in their profiles, and more use of adblock software. Sometimes too personal is just too personal. More people are blogging about the info that advertisers are using from web surfing habits, and google recently announced that serious privacy decisions need to be made within 5 years, although I think that is a realistic timeline, really, much should be decided and publicly presented much sooner in our over connected world.
google privacy article from Reuters: * Links added by co-author of this post, not original author!
By David Ljunggren
OTTAWA (Reuters) - National regulators need to agree on a basic set of global privacy protections for the Internet within the next five years, a senior official with web searcher Google said on Monday.
Peter Fleischer, the firm’s global privacy counsel, said three quarters of countries had no Internet privacy standards at a time when the amount of sensitive personal and financial data on the Web was soaring.
Google — itself criticized for the threat it poses to personal privacy — says the firm’s business agenda, the world economy and the Internet could suffer unless more is done to ensure basic privacy on the Web.
“What we’re saying is that the Internet is making this particularly urgent and that the Internet develops at a different speed than the speed at which traditional lawmaking and policy-making discussions take place,” Fleischer said.
“I think this is something that needs to happen within five years. That’s just us saying what we think is realistic as an urgent action,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Google, unhappy with what it calls a patchwork of conflicting privacy rules in some countries and a complete lack in many others, is pressing for action amid criticism about the enormous access to personal information on the Web.
“I think everyone has acknowledged that the status quo is not good enough any more,” said Fleischer.
Google wants countries to adopt privacy principles agreed by several Asia-Pacific countries. Fleischer said some backed this idea while others wanted to focus on what the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is doing.
“That’s fine. The important thing from Google’s perspective is that there is a focus and debate around moving forward on global privacy standards,” he said.
“If we can … improve the standards in three quarters of the countries in the world, regardless of which model they follow, that is a huge step forward.”
He said perfect harmonization was unlikely, but the basic model could combine laws, codes of conduct and best practices.
Even if nations did not agree on standards within five years, Google would consider it progress if some countries without Internet privacy rules took action, said Fleischer.
“We’re playing a very long game here. We believe we’re working for the success of Google services over a very long period of time … and one of the things that everybody needs to improve is an understanding of privacy,” he said.
There have been some articles about people who are shocked that employers, and police are using myspace, facebook and similar social networks to look into your life, but I do not think there has been enough in the media about it, nor easy to use options to stop info you want to share with friends from being put out into the public. Ex lovers and future love interests of course may also be stalking your myspace page, as well as your friend’s kids I come to find out.
from the college recruiter blog:
If you’re like most college and even high school students, you have posted your profile to Facebook, MySpace, or another social networking site. But did you realize that your profile can easily be accessed by potential employers, schools, law enforcement agencies, and others? As much as that revelation may be a shock for students, it also came as a shock to those who set up the sites because they never intended outsiders to use the information for purposes other than benign social networking.
The terms of service of these sites typically prohibit their use for commercial purposes. Facebook’s terms of service page, for example, states that users understand that the service is available for “personal, non-commercial use only.” No reasonable person could argue with a straight face that recruitment is a non-commercial use, but just because such use is prohibited doesn’t mean that it isn’t happening.
Let me be clear that I love Facebook, MySpace, and the other social networking sites. They’re wonderful tools to help students and others connect with people who share their interests. But they also must be used carefully. You should assume that anything that you post on-line is going to be read by your old-fashioned grandmother. If you’re fine with her reading your profile, then its contents should be fine. Few would talk with their grandmothers about getting drunk, sexual experiences, breaking laws, etc. so why would they post such information on-line for anyone and everyone to read? Perhaps it is our exhibitionist culture. Today’s college students have grown up in an era where the most celebrated stars are on reality TV shows, so how can we blame them for believing that such behavior is to be celebrated rather than pitied?
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09.25.07
Posted in Internet Business at 5:44 pm by Administrator
From the EFF a seminar I am hoping will be recorded, edited and available on the web, for I can not afford the travel to make it out to Cali right now. It’s a great price for those who can make it, and the topics are important, with experts offering advice worth more than the price of travel and admission. If you are thinking about starting a social network or already have a site that harnesses user generated content check it out:
What
One-Day bootcamp. EFF’s staff attorneys will be teamed with private attorneys specializing in the various legal issues. We’ll give you the basics on the key topics and you’ll leave better able to protect your customers, your company and your job.
Topic areas
- Defamation, harassment, and other accusations of bad behavior.
- Fair use, free culture, and the right to remix.
- Copyright take-downs and put-backs: Understanding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
- How to respond to cops, crooks, and courts who want your customers’ communications and other private information.
- How to avoid becoming the next Napster and stay on the safe side of the Copyright Wars.
- The rights of anonymous speakers.
- Porn, predators, and the pressure to police.
- Lightning rounds on Creative Commons licenses, webcasting and what to do when you’ve been hacked.
Who should attend
People who do front-line or mid-level work for companies and projects that rely on user-generated content and communications. This includes compliance, customer service and community management workers.
Info orignally found via boing boing
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08.05.06
Posted in Internet Business, Internet Users at 8:41 pm by Administrator
How are we going to fix this one? Just keep turing off java, flash and every other cool web service that makes the net great?
Blog Feeds Provide New Security Threat
From XBIZ
By Steve Javors
LAS VEGAS — Exploiting the vulnerability of blog feeds, hackers have found a new medium to surreptitiously attack PCs.
Bob Auger, a security engineer with SPI Dynamics, said that hackers could insert malicious JavaScript in blog updates that are delivered to subscribers’ machines via Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or Atom feeds. Auger presented his findings during the annual Black Hat Briefings, an Internet security conference.
Auger said blog feeds can be compromised in two ways: hackers setting up a corrupted blog and getting users to subscribe to its RSS feed, or more likely, inserting malicious code into a popular blog’s comments section, which often have their own feed.
Attackers also can send malicious code to mailing lists that offer feeds to attack compromised systems, Auger said. Feeds have risen to prominence because they allow users to consolidate information from websites into a single interface. This eliminates the need for clicking on a plethora of different websites.
Many RSS or feed readers do not include security software that can filter out malicious code. Auger said these applications should prevent JavaScript from running.
“A large percentage of the readers I tested had some kind of an issue,†Auger said. Vulnerable feed readers include Bloglines, RSS Reader, RSS Owl, Feed Demon and Sharp Reader, according to Auger.
Filtering out JavaScript at the feed reader level can get complicated because many readers use the code to deliver ads like one would see if they accessed the blog homepage.
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06.08.06
Posted in Internet Business, Software and Web Apps at 3:38 am by Administrator
From Business Week:
But behind the peculiarities, Web 2.0 portends a real sea change on the Internet. If there’s one thing they have in common, it’s what they’re not. Web 2.0 sites are not online places to visit so much as services to get something done — usually with other people. From Yahoo!’s (YHOO) photo-sharing site Flickr and the group-edited online reference source Wikipedia to the teen hangout MySpace, and even search giant Google (GOOG), they all virtually demand active participation and social interaction (see BW Online, 9/26/05, “It’s A Whole New Web”). If these Web 2.0 folks weren’t so geeky, they might call it the Live Web.
And though these Web 2.0 services have succeeded in luring millions of consumers to their shores, they haven’t had much to offer the vast world of business. Until now.
Read more from Business Week…
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04.28.06
Posted in Internet Business at 10:35 pm by Administrator
A Grand Unified Theory of YouTube and MySpace
From Boing Boing
A terrific Slate piece by Paul Boutin about the factors contributing to YouTube’s success: it’s easy to use, and it doesn’t “tell you what to do.” Snip:
The guys behind YouTube hit the sweet spot. Most important, they made it head-slappingly easy to publish and play video clips by handling the tricky parts automatically. Given up on BitTorrent because it feels like launching a mission to Mars? If you’ve sent an e-mail attachment, you’ve got the tech skills to publish on YouTube.
To post your own video, sign up for a free account and go to the Upload page. Select your file, click the Upload Video button, and you’re done! YouTube’s servers convert your vid to a standardized format, but you don’t need to know what that format is. If you send the URL to your aunt, it’ll play in her browser without spraying the screen with pop-ups and errors.
You don’t have to upload video to use YouTube. If you just like to watch, it’s even easier. There’s no software to install, no settings to muck with. The video auto-plays as soon as you load the page, without launching more windows—why can’t CNN do that?
Three months ago, I predicted Google Video would become the hottest thing on the Net. I was wrong, and I think Google has failed to take off for the simple reason that it’s more annoying to use than YouTube. To begin with, you have to install Google’s special uploading application. When I tried to upload the same clips I’d posted to YouTube, Google’s app wouldn’t let me. I combed through the FAQ and found this: “While we also support other digital formats such as QuickTime, Windows Media, and RealVideo … submitting your files in these formats may significantly delay us from using them on Google Video.” Come on, guys. Whatever happened to “I’m Feeling Lucky?”
Link
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04.26.06
Posted in Internet Business at 6:45 pm by Administrator
From Reuters
NEW YORK (Reuters) - AT&T Inc. said on Wednesday it will offer its high-speed Internet subscribers a movie delivery service in partnership with Starz Entertainment Group, a unit of Liberty Media Corp..
Vongo, the service from Starz, will feature a co-branded AT&T and Vongo Web site at http://www.att.vongo.com with a 14-day free trial to AT&T high-speed Internet subscribers.
Vongo, which was unveiled earlier this year, offers subscribers unlimited access to more than 1,500 movie and video selections as well as live, streaming Starz TV channel for $9.99 a month.
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04.21.06
Posted in Internet Business, Marketing at 12:00 am by Administrator
Niche Web networking sites chase MySpace ad dollars
From Reuters / Found via Yahoo
By Yinka Adegoke
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Social networking online isn’t just for hip twenty-year-olds any longer, as a new wave of targeted Internet community sites build business models to attract larger audiences and more advertisers.
The Internet will see a lot more targeted community launches in the coming months, both from start-up companies and established media businesses, rather than the general youth community sites that defined the sector such as MySpace.com, Facebook.com or Friendster.com, industry watchers say.
At least two new sites were unveiled this week. Sisterwoman.com caters to women over 21 while JokeBox.com invites users to share jokes and other funny material.
Like most social networking sites, both allow users to create and share blogs, pictures and videos with friends and the wider public.
“You’re going to see a lot of these kinds of sites in the next six to nine months, both start-ups and major companies,” said Andrew Frank, an analyst at Gartner Research.
Frank said that sites such as Sisterwoman would offer advertisers added value in reaching an audience that will be prepared to engage with marketers.
The sector drew investor attention after News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million last July. In March, General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal said it planned to buy women’s online network iVillage for $600 million.
Sisterwoman launched on Wednesday after signing on ahead of time four major advertisers, including beauty-care line Neutrogena and cable network The Learning Channel.
Sisterwoman is offering them the opportunity to sponsor services around which users can share their own photos, videos or other links.
Founder Allie Savarino said advertisers were traditionally resistant to two-way conversations with consumers, which opens the gates on both positive feedback as well as criticism.
“Now they realize they have no way of increasing their market share without it,” Savarino told Reuters. “It is tied to the ownership that consumers have of your brand.”
GROWNUPS WANTED
Sisterwoman and Jokebox are the latest in a new line of community sites hoping to build on the success of younger-skewing Internet networks but attract mainstream advertisers looking for other audiences.
Jib-Jab Media, a company behind popular comic Internet films, also unveiled this week a site allowing users to share jokes and funny material. The company described JokeBox.com, which featured a prominent plug for Bud Light beer on its home page on Wednesday, as a hybrid of MySpace and cable channel Comedy Central.
Sites aimed at adult consumers would appeal more to advertisers than MySpace, despite the youth network’s huge popularity, said Eric Wheeler, chief executive of Internet media buyer Neo@Ogilvy North America, a unit of WPP Group.
Advertisers are generally concerned over the commentary they may receive online, and even more wary of the freewheeling discussions of younger users.
“Anytime you move away from buying a placement (in the media) to buying something that is live, it can get a little dicey for advertisers,” said Wheeler.
Adults are also more likely to recommend brands to each other on a regular basis and may be more receptive to advertiser messages, Savarino said.
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04.17.06
Posted in Internet Business at 3:24 pm by Administrator
An exerpt from an article via newsvine / AP
Internet merchants once viewed such chargebacks and other payment fraud as a cost of doing business, mainly because they are difficult and time-consuming to fight. But with fraud sapping hundreds of millions of dollars from online revenues, companies that do all or most of their business over the Internet are increasingly pushing back.
“Merchants are not willing to accept this any more. They are fighting tooth and nail,” said Kathleen Attinello, an executive vice president at Receivable Management Services, which fights chargebacks on behalf of online travel agencies, video game sites and other merchants.
Internet companies are trying to chip away at the fraud problem by hiring companies like RMS, employing technology that spots potential fraud before it happens and using payer-verification services such as those offered by Visa and MasterCard.
and another excerpt:
Fraud-weary merchants have adopted elaborate procedures for completing a sale, matching a customer’s shipping address to the billing address, verifying that the card hasn’t been reported lost or stolen and checking for any unusual activity on the card.
Card companies are also helping Web merchants fight back, offering payer-authentication services and other fraud-fighting tools and streamlining the process by which chargeback disputes are mediated.
“The rules have changed,” said Tom Sullivan, director of e-commerce risk at travel site Expedia.com and chairman of the Merchant Risk Council. “Internet merchants now have the ability to say, `Hey, this person accepted the terms and conditions explicitly, and as a result, shouldn’t be able to charge this back.”
The payer-authentication services, which Visa calls “Verified by Visa” and MasterCard calls “SecureCode,” run on the same platform and work much the same way.
For cardholders registered with the programs, Internet retailers can ask for a password registered with the cardholder’s bank, giving the retailer evidence of the purchase and leverage should a dispute arise.
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