By: Richard Linning
Microsoft
is taking another swipe at Gmail with a campaign to encourage people to dump
Gmail for Outlook (http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-microsoft-privacy-campaign-against-google-gmail-20130206,0,6815888.story). So
what? It is just another shuffle of the deck of marked cards from the “How to
Make Money from the Web” game book. The real news is that 7 out of 10 Americans
say they don't believe or didn't know that any major email service provider
scans the content of personal emails in order to better target ads. In fact all digital traffic receives the same
treatment. It is called data mining. And
yes, the public relations industry benefits too: SEO or search engine
optimization makes it possible to better target PR clients’ messages. Not to the stakeholders, but to a
stakeholder. Is this the global picture, I expect so.
Our every
online transaction – from our social media presence, to our searches to our
buying habits – is already subject to the once over from some algorithm. There’s no such thing as a free lunch on the web. Now, the government in the UK has
announced it is getting in on the act too with Deep Packet Inspection. With its
black box technology, British spy agencies want to
log data from all digital communications, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter,
Skype calls with family members, and yes, even visits to pornographic websites (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2274388/MI5-install-black-box-spy-devices-monitor-UK-internet-traffic.html#ixzz2KEPL2nOp). Today the UK, tomorrow it is where you live, if it isn’t
already happening. The
really comforting thing is that (as Google puts it), “No
humans read your email or Google account information in order to show you
advertisements or related information."
The free stuff has to be paid for somehow and the somehow is targeted
advertising, marketing, and public relations.
As communicators the public relations role is being taken over by
geeks. Now, as customers, we have targeted
pricing. Look at this way, you enter a
store, the salesman or woman sums you up (think Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman here) and decides what you
can afford – or not afford – to pay. Personal-identification-storage technology
is doing the same thing online. It means goods are being priced according to you,
the customer. Once it was the inventory
that drove price. For example, the guy or gal on the flight next to you
probably didn’t pay the same price for his/her seat because price was designed
to shift capacity risk (to you and me, empty seats). Dynamic pricing programs have taken over from
the shop floor in targeting you, the customer according to what you can pay. We all know what is next. Tracking online behavior
variables will help determine our future buying intentions. Hang on, that’s already happening, but I
guess like 7 out of 10 Americans and data mining you didn’t know that. But
that’s for another CGPR posting.
