Deanonymization: The Grand Illusion
"We may share aggregated, non-personally identifiable information publicly and with our partners - like publishers, advertisers or connected sites. For example, we may share information publicly to show trends about the general use of our services."
Of all of the mind-numbingly horrifying quotes you could draw out of Google's privacy policy, none shake me to my core more than the one above. After I read a statement like this from a major corporation that I share gigabytes of data with, my immediate inclination is something that I hope most people have: find out what Google means by "non-personally identifiable information", or as we say in the buisness, Non-PII. If you follow the link that Google kindly provides, you are brought farther down the page. Suddenly, just when you thought it couldn't get scarier, you're presented with this definition:
"This is information that is recorded about users so that it no longer reflects or references an individually identifiable user."
The obvious uselessness of the definition is not something I'm even going to touch upon. Instead I'm going to ask you whether or not you think you believe them. Ultimately, I think I do. I think I believe them when they say that individually each of these Non-PII's can't be used against me, but together? If all of the pieces of this puzzle are sold to Company A, what's not to say that Company A can compile all of these into their database and build personally-identifiable information (PII)? What if we're all lying to each other when we say that deanonymization isn't working?
Before I close I need to admit to something. I have had moment after moment of internally applauding Google for the accuracy in its generative traffic reports in Google Maps. It helps me save time daily in figuring out faster routes from point A to point B with more efficiency and ease of use than I can even begin to say. We all used Google Drive when brainstorming and building this project. We have a gmail account, for Christ's sake. Ultimately I just shrug my shoulders and hope that nothing toxic is being done with my data. Call me naive, call me complacent. You'd be right by saying both.
Lastly, you might be wondering "What does this have to do with marketing?" Well Wikipedia defines marketing as "the methodology of communicating the value of a product or service to customers, for the purpose of selling that product or service." 1) Communicating with your customers what you're doing with their data is something that Google fails tremendously in, there's your "communicating", and I can promise you now that if Google is selling it then there's someone buying it, there's your "selling."
If you're hopelessly passionate about the failure of deanonymization then follow this link and learn more with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- Josh
Secret of Apple's Marketing Success
How is Apple so successful? Why is it that they can consistently convince people to buy products with way more power then they even know how to harness, let alone need? It's simple: they're marketing geniuses. A long time ago, Apple realized that the best way to stand out in this loud-and-flashy internet age isn't by being even louder-and-flashier, but to be simplistic. Research shows that the most effective way to reach customers is by simplifying their decision making process. Companies who simplify and streamline their decision making process for their customers were 86% more likely to make a sale. On top of that, customers were 115% more likely to recommend the product to someone. This is because on a daily basis, the average person is bombarded with thousands of pieces of information. If that info looks to complex or messy, we will just ignore it. Apple understands how little time we give to each piece of information thrown our way. So they produce something that is clean, sharp, and simple, and ironically, because of this, it stands out more to us. It's kind of insulting actually, consumers should feel insulted. Do we really pay so little attention to the world around us that the only way to get information to us is to deliver it in "bite-size" pieces since we're too dumb to chew on our own? You cant argue with numbers though, so it must be that we really do need our food pre-chewed. What caused this you ask? Too much information being shoved into our brains then we can handle. It's a natural defense mechanism that we block a lot of it out. I think consumers block out too much tho. As a consumer, you have a responsibility to yourself to at least pay enough attention that you can tell when something intrests you, not have the companies sublimanily let you know you should. So pay more attention! Don't be like a mindless sheep, droning along until you're shepard tells you something is interesting; assert some independent thinking every once in a while, it could do you some good. -Tyler
Comcast Trolls America Part -- Are they lying to themselves or just us?
In November of 2013, Comcast Corporation chairman and CEO Brian Roberts suggested in an interview that Comcast customers get a bad customer service interaction "one-tenth of one percent" of the time. In April of 2014 David Cohen, executive vice-president of Comcast Corporation, told The New York Times that Comcast does a "great job on way more than 99 percent" of its service calls.
On DSL Reports, Karl Bode promptly called Cohen and Roberts out on their baffling claims, writing that "[Comcast] tries to pretend that they simply have so many customers, it's a small vocal minority of complainers that are to blame for the company's bad reputation, not the company itself:
Comcast Math:
When we look at the numbers using David Cohen's estimate that "Comcast does a great job on way more than 99% of service calls." By Cohen's estimate, Comcast does a not-great job on only 1% of service calls.
According to David Cohen's numbers:
The probability of a bad call is 1 in 100.
The probability of three consecutive bad calls is 1 in a million.
The probability of six consecutive bad calls is 1 in a trillion.
And the probability of one Comcast customer's experience - 25 consecutive Comcast fails - is 1 in 100 quindecillion (a 1 followed by 50 zeroes).
To recap, according to Comcast executive David Cohen's publicly stated estimation, the odds that someone could ever have a Comcast experience like mine are 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Has anyone ever experienced Comcast screw up more than one time in a row? Please do share. And if you'd like to crunch the numbers yourself, just calculate 100 to the power of N (where N is the number of consecutive Comcast failures). For instance, if you've been through 4 consecutive Comcast fails, 100 to the power of 4 equals 100,000,000 (therefore the probability of 4 consecutive fails is supposedly only 1 out of 100,000,000).
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Roberts, unless you are actively trying to insult or antagonize your customers, the media, or really anyone who hears you speak, you should probably try a tiny bit harder when making up completely false statistics about Comcast service calls or customer satisfaction.
- David
Marketing in the technology industry - A Manifesto
When you think of the word marketing you don't also think of the word trustworthy. This is old news and it is as human to lie to someone to sell them something as it is to be suspicious of people with an agenda. Ever since the early days of the yellow press sensational advertising has been known for deceiving the public to further their (usually commercial) goals. Marketing has always had an important place in our social structure and economy.
Why then is marketing in the technology industry different or noteworthy? People don't trust marketing in any area. There are a hundred products that can clean my windows; I know that, I don't really buy that your brand will make me a happier person. Why should we care about tech marketing in a different way? Perhaps we can look at the sentence right above for the answer. People have a least some level of knowledge with most products - I know what window cleaning products offer and around what they should cost. This is not the case with the booming slew of technologies on the market!
Historically a huge amount of money has been poured into Cigarette advertising. For a long time the big ad agencies did a great job of making people feel immortal even when they knew smoking was bad for them.Eventually the greater community and government came together to make the mostly illegal because of apparently obvious moral implications. It was wrong to give people the wrong idea about this product when it could harm them.
The problem with marketing in the technology industry today is this same moral one - multibillion dollar advertising machines are pumping out content (or fluff) that bombards us with ideas about what their new gadget or app with do and how it will make us feel - and we, as consumers have no compass to judge this. The tech world we live in is one of give and take. Sure, take this free social media service and give us your personal information to sell on the market. These issues revolving around privacy are not talked about in the main stream and even when they are - just like big tobacco before them, big data cover their tail well.
The technology industry is so new that people don't have the basic knowledge they have with other things that are being marketed to them. They don't know the implications of their technology usage and there is no industry standard for reasonable regulations concerning it. These factors combined make for a dangerous mix.
For this reason it is our responsibility to educate the consuming public as a defense against the deception of the multibillion dollar tech marketing industry.
- David
Amazon
When considering the implications technology has on the US marketplace, retail sales are ultimately what drive our consumeristic economy. It is projected that 60% of U.S. retail sales will involve the web by 2017. It's important to look at the big players in the industry, to see what exactly this company is doing that is making it so successful.
Amazon is the largest internet-based company in the United States and continues to grow rapidly as time goes on. But just how large will Amazon become? In the research I have done, I have come up with three specific reasons that have contributed to Amazon's success and will continue to contribute to Amazon's future success.
1. Psuedo-monopoly
For Amazon, money does not seem to be a problem. In 2013, net sales peaked at $74.45 billion, compared with $61.09 billion in 2012. Over the past 15 years sales have grown an astounding 41% per year, rising from under $1 billion in 1998 to nearly $75 billion in 2013. But how exactly has Amazon become so successful? What sets them apart from the competition?
2. Big Data
One of the forces that drives Amazon is the amount of data Amazon has access to.The amount of data Amazon has on people is astounding. Giant corporations like Amazon have made an astounding amount of money from the data contributed by customers. With this data, Amazon can customize the shopping experience to meet the needs of each and every customer.
3. Innovation
The world in which we live is changing, and it's changing fast. If a company isn't willing to innovate, it will be left in the dust as technology continues to advance. As massive as Amazon is, it could become irrelevant if they do not keep up with technological trends.
Here are some of the Projects Amazon is currently working on:
Amazon Prime Air
The Amazon Echo
Amazon Echo Commercial
Amazon also offers a cloud computing service known as AWS
More information regarding this can be found here.
- Steve
Quick glance:
No blocking - service providers should not be permitted to block requests to local web sites or internet services.
No throttling - service providers should not be able to slow down traffic intentionally to favour other services.
Increased transparency - to apply not only to connections between service providers and consumers but also to interconnections with the rest of the internet.
No paid prioritization - no service should be stuck in a "slow lane" because it does not pay a fee.
- David