March 11th-March 18th

•

Good Morning and I hope everyone had fun on St. Patrick's Day. I thought that I would write this week about something that everyone can understand (unlike Carolyn's postings about AGM....).  SOCIAL MEDIA. I will first explain its importance (which everyone probably knows), demonstrate current legislation effected by it (which nobody probably knows), and then talk a little about the ACLU's take on it (which nobody probably cares).

Importance! The growth of the social network is astounding in comparison to other technologies of the past. Typically, this is measured by the amount of time it takes different media networks to reach 50 million users. For the radio it took 38 years, TV 13 years, internet 4 years, ipod 3 years, and for Facebook 8 months to reach 100 million users. If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest, and the fastest growing segment are women between the ages of 55-65. 1 in 8 couples that are married have met through a social network. More then 1.5 million pieces of content are shared on Facebook daily. Facebook and Twitter have a combined annual income of $950 million and over 800 million users worldwide.

By 2012 our generation Y will finally out number the Baby Boomers and 96% of us belong to a social network.

Current policy issues! As you might imagine, with movement comes controversy and with constroversy comes policy. The growth of social media has raised all sorts of concerns, but the one I will cover here is online tracking. In case you do not already know, when you go on the internet the sights you visit are monitored by companies. Based on the sites you visit, you will receive certain advertisements. This is the simple definition of "targeted advertising". The battle is between personal privacy rights versus free content.

Chairman Rockefeller of the Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation understands the need to balance free content with concerns of privacy collection. How information is collected, who is collecting this information, and how the information is used is unknown to many consumers. There are no laws to commerical privacy and the need to exchange information on fair terms and conditions with legitimate companies is the Chairman's primary goal.

Senator John Kerry was also at the hearing and stated that he does not want to discourage the sharing of information (targeted advertising), he wants to encourage it with legitimate companies. Unethical collection of data, personal information that is given to the wrong people, and identity theft can all be eliminated ny targeting the "bad guys". His goal is to reach a consensus on people's privacy on the internet, sort of a common code of conduct for consumers that is flexible and will not curtail innovation. By the way, John Kerry is a fantastic public speaker.

The FTC is pretty good at punishing companies for unethical privacy practices. Last 15 years they have brought 32 data security cases, 64 cases against companies for improperly calling customers, 97 spam cases, and 15 spyware cases. Last week commission alleged Chitika (company that works between website and advertisers) violated consumers ability to opted out of the collection of information by not informing them that the opted out only lasted ten days.

Finally, in comes the American Civil Leadership Union also known as the ACLU. Chris Calabrese the spokes person for the ACLU strongly asserted his position that advertising companies are created profiles of people with unprecented breadth and depth. According to Calabrese, reading habits, relgious affliation, sexual orietnation can all be shared legally with employers, schools and the government.

He provided an example of the distress caused by targeted advertising to a young overweight girl named Kate Reed. She is concered about her weight. All she wants to do is go online and stop thinking about it. All she sees is weight loss advertisments.

Without legal process that protects personal information, Calabrese says that identity theft, SSN, location of homes are all up for sale.

Senator Kerry disputed much of what Calabrese said as overreaching and Calabrese was unable to answer questions regarding the economic impact removing targeted advertisign would have on the internet.