Look at Facebook ... look at ChromeOS .... it's the same thing (only Facebook is further along). The business is data mining and advertising.
The issue will be who do you distrust the least.
Who is going to make it easiest to export my personal data to use somewhere else? Hopefully us geeks will keep pushing for this and then help everyone else follow.
Until then I feel like I'm just toying around with the flavor-of-the-month.
I don't trust any of them. That's why I don't have a Facebook page, I don't have a MySpace page, I don't use gmail or any of Google's services. I don't have a Twitter account. I do have an account on LinkedIn because my boss at my last job asked me to set one up, but I never update it.
I understand where you are coming from re: privacy issues, but aren't you also missing some real value?
I check Facebook 2 or 3 times a week to see what family and friends have been doing. With Twitter, I follow people into the same technologies that I am interested in, and I get a lot of interesting links.
re: gmail: I have never bought anything from a sponsored search link, but I do occasionally buy things from advertisement links on my email - also, sometimes I get an email from a customer asking me to help them with a problem and a useful link is on the right side of the customer email.
Sure, privacy issues are huge, but I think that people need to make a personal calculation of benefits vs. potential problems.
I have a very basic Facebook page, with just enough personal information so that people I've lost contact with over the years can find me if they wish to.
But I prefer to keep up with friends and family either in person, or via phone or email, and I don't update my own page more than once every few weeks.
I found Twitter to be far too expensive (in terms of wasted time) to be worth bothering with. It's not just the necessarily regular checking for new tweets, but the fact that this distracts me and breaks the flow of whatever I am supposed to be doing. I would guess that twitter users waste many hours per week (and possibly per day for heavy users) like this, in exchange for relatively few insightful comments or useful links.
I think it plays off people's desire for instant gratification, but the opportunity cost of using it is very high.
I don't either which is why i'd never use my real name when signing up to them. I dont mind giving them free content, i'm just not comfortable with how they can tally that content back to me.
How much free content do they need to tie it back to you? Remember AOL releasing some search queries, and quickly people were identified. I imagine that is not hard with facebook interactions either.
If you start along that road who do you trust. Many organisations now collect data on their customers: loyalty cards are a good example. That is before you get to public organisations. You'd have to be a hermit for data not to be collected on you and to be sold.
Do you just object because some companies make it their primary revenue stream or because it's obvious?
i wonder how people felt when phones first came out. the privacy nuts must have gone crazy: oh no! the operator could be listening to my personal conversations.
I often wonder if the business of online advertising really works well. Targeted advertising certainly has better results that blanket campaigns, but don't most users ignore advertisements by now? I know that I hardly even notice them anymore (even the good ones).
Not well targeted ads! One of the forums I frequent has a fairly new ad up almost all the time. A number of people have commented on their experiences purchasing the products from that vendor and as a result, many more (myself included!) plan to buy from them when the need arises. It's a simple banner ad and clicking it takes you to a gorgeous website that is a perfect showcase for what they're selling.
I really don't think most people (non-developers) dislike ads; we dislike annoying, generic ads that have nothing we're interested in.
Then again, my wife and I love the "messing with sasquatch" TV ads because they're so funny although I can't even remember what they're selling!
The issue will be who do you distrust the least.
Who is going to make it easiest to export my personal data to use somewhere else? Hopefully us geeks will keep pushing for this and then help everyone else follow.
Until then I feel like I'm just toying around with the flavor-of-the-month.