Over Under Sideways
Speaking of Big Data and Facebook, the marketing and privacy experts at Mark Zuckerman’s data mining company have come up with a new way to make money off of you: turning on the microphone on your mobile device, and listening in to your life as you live it.
The social network appears to be preparing to serve ads to users based on a Shazam-style feature that picks up via the microphones on devices with Facebook’s app installed—watching Breaking Bad? Check out this ad for the new drama on AMC. Listening to OutKast? Try Ludacris.…
Facebook’s ad strategy is getting more sophisticated every week; with the new tool (which Facebook stresses is optional, though you know how it is: if people like it and it’s convenient, that’s better than mandatory), it’ll have far more information about something Nielsen, Acxiom and other data giants conduct huge panel studies to determine: user media habits. Not the media habits users write down in diaries, but what people actually do and might not self-report to anyone but their friends—who marathons Murder, She Wrote until 3 in the morning or listens to nothing but Ween for three straight months.
…
- It’s totally fair to wonder where the data derived from the recordings—song title, album, etc.—is stored and where it goes. Based on the fact that this is being used for marketing, the short answer seems to be “to people who are willing to pay to know what you’re into.”
- It’s hard to make this not creepy. Facebook is using your cell phone to listen to you and serve you ads. It’s doing it all in the name of user convenience, of course, but it’s still doing it.
- Marketers are going to love this. Dynamic ad serving has been a pipe dream for so long, and Facebook’s multi-billion-person user base is everyone’s favorite thing for that specific purpose.
(click here to continue reading Listening to Beyoncé? Facebook Has an Ad for You | Adweek.)
Or Pay The Price
From the WSJ:
Facebook on Wednesday added a feature to its mobile app that identifies music and television shows playing in the background and suggests users share them with a larger audience.
The feature was the latest in a series of changes by Facebook to nudge users to divulge more—and more-specific—personal information on the social network. This week, it introduced a feature that allows users to prompt their friends to divulge more information about themselves. Last year, the social network allowed users to categorize posts by activity.
Facebook uses the data to sell targeted advertisements. The more detailed the information it gathers from users, the more personalized—and expensive—advertising the company can sell.
…
The recent changes represent an effort by Facebook to prod users into sharing more information about themselves. In recent years, the company has added categories, like “watching,” “eating” or “listening,” that users can add to their posts. In April it created a “traveling to” category, allowing users to post their travel destinations. A “nearby friends” feature, also rolled out last month, lets users know when their Facebook friends are in the vicinity. Turning on the feature lets Facebook track users wherever they go, even when the app is closed.
This week, Facebook began allowing users to request their friends’ relationship status using the new “Ask” button.
Advertisers like the additional data.
(click here to continue reading Facebook Adds Feature to Identify Music, TV Shows – WSJ.com.)
Continuous Video Recording in Progress
Amusingly, Facebook announced on the same day:
Responding to business pressures and longstanding concerns that its privacy settings are too complicated, Facebook announced on Thursday that it was giving a privacy checkup to every one of its 1.28 billion users.
…
“They have gotten enough privacy black eyes at this point that I tend to believe that they realized they have to take care of consumers a lot better,” said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. Ms. Dixon was briefed in advance about the latest changes.
For most of its 10-year history, Facebook has pushed — and sometimes forced — its users to share more information more publicly, drawing fire from customers, regulators and privacy advocates across the globe.
(click here to continue reading Facebook Offers Privacy Checkup to All 1.28 Billion Users – NYTimes.com.)
Sure, sure they are.