If you’re reading this, we avoided the Mayan Apocalypse (which, incidentally, sounds like a very nice bar of high-cocoa-content chocolate), so Happy New Year! But it also means that we’re straight into ’13 which, as we all know, is liable to be unlucky for some. Read more on How to get lucky in ’13…
Even with the most private of privacy settings there’s a wealth of information known about us without us even realising it. An article in the New Scientist sheds more light on the information social networks know about us which they are reluctant to reveal.
If you’re like me and have worked in data your whole career, you’ve probably spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to explain to your friends and family what you actually do. “No, I don’t sell lists, I don’t send junk mail, I actually try to stop people sending junk mail. I look for patterns of behaviour in data that marketers can react to. What do you mean you don’t get it?”.
So when my dad gave me a book written by L.E. Modesitt: “Flash” – a book categorised as science fiction – and asked ‘is this what you do, but in far distant future’ (according to Wikipedia the 24th century, and I wouldn’t argue with them) I couldn’t wait to read it. And lo and behold, I’d finally found a family member who understood what I do. Read more on New Data startups are (nearly) making 24th century science fiction happen today…
Nothing seems to polarise marketers more than the topic of digital data privacy. At one end of the spectrum there’s the “Everybody look at me” Facebook mentality, and at the other the “I delete all cookies regularly” crew.
Personally – nothing springs to mind that I do online that really matters if anyone knows.
But just because nothing I’m doing is “wrong”, that doesn’t stop it being “private”. What I do is my business isn’t it? Read more on Data Privacy in the digital world – the “Do not track” movement & humanizing data…
Last week I went to a fascinating talk by Mark Earl’s basically paraphrasing his latest book “I’ll have what she’s having” – mapping social behaviour.
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