Yesterday I read “Advertisers Get a Trove of Clues in
Smartphones,” Shopping and Social Media: The Retailers Guide to Big Data,” and
the introduction to The Numerati
. It’s fascinating the vast amount of
information that can be obtained just by observing people’s web surfing habits,
but the practice of mining big data brings up a huge issue that we have often faced
in the recent past: privacy concerns.
Detailed here are what could be the top five web privacy concerns
of 2013. Among the list are both “Walking
a Fine Line Between Effective Marketing and Privacy Intrusion,” and “Social
Media Websites Using Location-Based Services Need to Avoid Privacy Nightmares.” This raises two major concerns among social
media marketers.
Time and again we’ve seen user backlash against Facebook for
privacy leaks, unclear privacy standards, and overall a very opaque and
ever-changing policy regarding user privacy.
One of the main complaints is that users never know where they stand on
privacy controls. The company changes
policy without much notification to users, and Facebook Friends don’t know what
kind of information about them is available to fellow users and potential
advertisers. Facebook’s latest offering,
Home, stands to be the next in line to raise privacy concerns. The app is downloaded onto the Android phone
as the home screen and basically keeps FB up and running at all times while
also providing the app access to information contained on the phone and
web-surfing habits of the user. It will
be interesting to see how the company responds to privacy concerns
One of the most important things companies can do in this
age of big data is be transparent about how they use big data. It’s a lot harder for a mobile app user to
complain about selling his information to an advertiser if you made it very clear
up front that that is a possibility (not to say that it won’t happen; people
will always lash out if they feel their privacy has been invaded).
No comments:
Post a Comment