Is Google Evil?

Perhaps not, at least in the theological sense. That said, for a company that pertains to 'do no evil', Google could be more upfront in their privacy policy changes. If consent is predicated on information not just being available, but actively consumed and understood - Google should be doing more, particularly given its quasi-common carrier status. They have finally announced that they will begin tracking users universally across all its services (Gizmondo has a report here). This was released via a blog post (here), and goes into effect March 1. Google have worked harder on transparency and privacy in recent years, but more upfront information should be provided, particularly given their emphasis on forcing users to provide real names (as with Google Plus) and now the endeavour to tie all Google usage back to an individual's name.

Best of the blackouts

Advertising Age has an interesting little article here highlighting some of the best blackout images from the SOPA and PIPA protests (Wired has a good clear account of what SOPA/PIPA about here). My favourite is this animated gif from The Oatmeal.

Cash value of information: $100 billion

Should one be in doubt as to the value of critical accounts of privacy, one only need consider the scale of informational industries. The New Scientist has an interesting snippet here pointing out that in 2012 Facebook is expected to launch on the stock market with an initial public offering (IPO) valuing the social network at $100 billion. As with oil, gas, metals, diamonds or any other industry that relies on a standing reserve or resource to be mined, we might want to pay careful attention to these practices, particularly as in the case of information it is our information that is being mined. To de-abstract “information”, and not to mention demographic signifiers and movements across the web, it is our life events, aspirations, motivations, friendships, insights, feelings and moods that are being mined. Although this information only becomes valuable in relation to other bits of information, this should not detract from the premise of what comprises fuel for the informational industries.

Facebook settles privacy case with FTC

Despite promising users that it would not share personal information with advertisers, it did. Facebook will be required to get user consent for certain changes to privacy settings as part of a settlement of federal charges that it deceived consumers and forced them to share more personal information than they intended. More from Reuters here.

Branding #Occupy

An insightful article here on the branding of #Occupy. A past master at "meme" warfare, Kalle Lasn and Adbusters have managed to brand grassroots activism and provide a rallying cry for a just cause.

Social networking cuts six degrees of separation to four

The Telegraph reports on a new study by Facebook’s data team and the University of Milan, which assessed the relationships between 721 million active users (more than 10 per cent of the global population) of the social network, has found that the average number of connections between people has dropped to four. Article here.

Newspapers: revenue from digital advertising exceeds print

Writing for the The Guardian, Roy Greenslade picks up on a small but significant moment in publishing history, and a possible pointer to the future. A prominent US magazine publisher, Atlanltic Media, has reporting that its digital advertising revenue has exceeded print advertising revenue. Story here.

Catvertising

Sometimes I love YouTube:

UK data fears confirmed: breaches rise by 58 per cent

The Information Commissioner's Office has revealed here that although businesses are taking the protection of their customers’ data more seriously, in fact more breaches were being reported and fewer than half of all individuals believe companies treat personal data appropriately. Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham said:

“I’m encouraged that the private sector is waking up to its data protection responsibilities, with unprompted awareness of the Act’s principles higher than ever. However, the sector does not seem to be putting its knowledge to good use. The fact is that security breaches in the private sector are on the rise, and public confidence in good information handling is declining. Businesses seem to know what they need to do – now they just need to get on with doing it. It’s not just the threat of a £500,000 fine that should provide the incentive. Companies need to consider the damage that can be done to a brand’s reputation when data is not handled properly. Customers will turn away from brands that let them down.”

Tracing #OccupyWallStreet

Reuters have a fascinating little article here that traces the history of the #OccupyWallStreet hashtag. Beginning with a call to action from Adbusters, the article details that while slow to take hold, by 11 p.m. on September 16 it had struck a "tipping point".

Blocking tracking

Rudely lifted wholesale from "Unlike Us" (here), that seeks an alternative to media monopolies, here is a list of browser extensions that are specifically meant to block online tracking.

1: Priv3
The Priv3 Firefox extension lets you remain logged in to the social networking sites you use and still browse the web, knowing that those third-party sites only learn where you go on the web when you want them to.
2: Ghostery
Ghostery allows you to block scripts from companies that you don’t trust, delete local shared objects, and even block images and iframes. Ghostery puts your web privacy back in your hands.
3: Disconnect
Disconnect stops major third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do
4: ShareMeNot
ShareMeNot is a Firefox add-on designed to prevent third-party buttons (such as the Facebook “Like” button or the Twitter “tweet” button) embedded by sites across the Internet from tracking you until you actually click on them.

German website Heise also offers a ‘two-clicks for more privacy’-solution that –when implemented- disables the social buttons (Like, tweet, plus) –an their ability to track- by default and activates them only when the user toggles them on. Sidenote: the German state of Schleswig-Holstein banned the ‘like’ button in August, fining the state institutions who kept the like button on their website.

Facebook: the 'creepy' test

The Telegraph has an article here quoting Sean Parker, an investor in and former president of Facebook, commenting “There’s good creepy and there’s bad creepy. And today’s creepy is tomorrow’s necessity”. This is akin to Zuckerberg's recent pronouncement (and PR gaff) that privacy is dead. Certainly in Europe, the debate has a long way to go. What is interesting though is the clash of philosophies, that is perhaps along a Europe/US divide. One tends towards deontological positions (as enshrined in the Article 29 working group's position in privacy) and that of the US. This, at least as far as industry goes, but also many legislators, appears more Pragmatic, in the sense that privacy is not absolute. Rather, it is up for renegotiation as social circumstances change. Of course, while deontological positions run the risk of outdating themselves, Pragmatic perspectives are subject to those who are powerful enough to dicate the conversation. The privacy issue on both sides of the Atlantic has a long long way to go.

Cameron's website to combat sexualisation of TV content

The Guardian reports that David Cameron is poised to announce the launch of a "whistleblowing" website designed to make it easy for parents and members of the public to lodge complaints about the "sexualisation" of TV programmes, advertising and products that may be inappropriate for children. The website will act as a one-stop online "triage" centre for the public to lodge complaints about content, products, services and advertising – by pointing visitors in the direction of appropriate regulators such as Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). More here.

UK students ‘most distracted by social media’

More than nine out of ten British students are distracted by Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites at least once an hour, a new global survey has claimed. Article at Telegraph.co.uk here.

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you

The Guardian has an excellent piece on online advertising and profiling that details the granularity of contemporary mining programmes. For example, consider the position of Mr Smith, living in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The article tells us he is: (a) slightly overweight; he tried numerous diets and pills, bought home training equipment, and visits weight-loss forums – anonymously he thinks; (b) he has little debt, but he is in a precarious jobs situation; he often visits jobs post sites; he works in the heavy machinery sector, one that is listed as fragile; (c) he lives alone (Smith is tagged as divorced, with grown-ups kids); (d) then he tends to booze and smoke a bit (all of this known thanks to a look at his daily purchases, courtesy of XYZStore where he's an identified coupon-redeemer), etc, etc.

While the aforementioned is fictional, the attention to lifestyle, behaviour, experience and segmentation by deep level profilers is not. Full article here.

Office for National Statistics: social media

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have revealed that:

- 57 per cent of adults have used social networks this year, compared to 43 per cent in 2010

- 60 per cent of women said they use social networks, compared to 54 per cent of men.

- 16 to 24 age group, 91 per cent have accessed Facebook or Twitter this year.

- 8 per cent of over-65s having used the websites, up from the 8 per cent that a roughly comparable survey question found last year.

More from The Telegraph (ONS access is corporate only).

ICO privacy education in schools

Positive news from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that has called on schools to teach children about information rights and threats to their privacy online. The need for this was backed-up by research from law firm Speechly Bircham that showed while 88% of secondary students and 39% of primary students have social networking profiles, 60% had never read the privacy policies. Almost a third (32%) didn’t know what a privacy policy was and 23% didn’t know where it would be on a site. Full article from NewMediaAge here and details from the ICO here.

Such a development echoes one of the conclusions of my recent book The Mood of Information. This suggests that in addition to a stronger and clearer regulatory hand, it is desirable that management of one’s informational self should be introduced at a school curricula level in relation to digital citizenship and care over one’s image, as per developments initiated by the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS). Such developments might focus on increasing awareness and understanding of the nature of profiling, the virtue of informational autonomy, data management, the value of information, and consequences of the intimate relations we maintain with digital technologies in current and nascent semantic environments where both providers and third parties seek to understand behaviour.

Social media and hasty law-making

On Thursday 25th a group of leading human rights and civil liberties groups, including Open Rights Group, have written to the Home Secretary, Rt Hon Theresa May MP, regarding the Prime Minister's comments that the Government will “look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality”. It expresses serious concern about any such review of powers made in haste without proper consideration of the effects on legitimate communication.

Full letter and petition here

Bill Bernbach: 100

Anyone with an interest in creativity and advertising will have heard of Bill Bernbach, of Volkswagen and "Lemon" fame. Marking the year, DDB have put together a portfolio of his work. Link to Creative Review here.

A riot of communication

One aspect of the current milieu that has probably struck us all is the way in which rioters have managed to coordinate themselves and evade the police. As has been mentioned on numerous broadcasts, the fragmented nature of the riots has caused difficulties for controlling forces used to dealing with large swathes of people. In addition, whereas in the past police have been able to mobilise quickly through private radio, protesters and other groups have had to rely on public tools such as Twitter, etc. Communication and media is central here too but the tool of choice has been the BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) network. The New Scientist has a useful little article here explaining both how it works and how it can be hacked.

Phone hacking and decentralization

Light Blue Touchpaper, a collective of security researchers, from Cambridge provide interesting insight into the recent phone hacking debacle. Linking trends between the rise of blagging (obtaining personal data or information without the consent) and decentralized data access, they indicate here that such abuses will only increase.

What happened to podcasting?

It was only a few years ago I was receiving numerous dissertations about the future of new media, radio broadcasting and podcasting. Soon after, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter arrived and stole their thunder. An article from the BBC has some interesting figures revealing that podcasting is more popular than ever with more than eight million adults in the UK - around 16% of the adult population - having downloaded a podcast, with almost half listening to one at least once a week. Article here.

McLuhan: “I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt"

Master of aphorism and on occasion nonsense, Marshall McLuhan would have been one hundred years last Thursday. Alex Kusis from Gonzaga University has been maintaining a McLuhan Galaxy blog here as a repository of information about the many conferences, books, articles, blogs and links dedicated to him in this centenary year. Much ado on Twitter too at http://twitter.com/#!/FauxMcLuhan

Picture of social media in Europe

The Economist presents its report on the use of social media in Europe. It makes for interesting reading with Latvia, Poland, Slovakia and Cyprus featuring a high density of users per population. Privacy and misuse of personal data continues to feature highly in people's perceptions of social media. Report here.

The Mood of Information

My new book, The Mood of Information: A Critique of Online Behavioural Advertising, is now available for purchase. Have a look here for the homepage and here for Chap 1. Do drop me a line if you have any questions about it or would like to get together on a project relating to behavioural advertising.

Blurb from the back:
'The Mood of Information explores advertising from the perspective of information flows rather than the more familiar approach of symbolic representation. At the heart of this book is an aspiration to better understand contemporary and nascent forms of commercial solicitation predicated on the commodification of experience and subjectivity. In assessing novel forms of advertising that involve tracking users’ web browsing activity over a period of time, this book seeks to grasp and explicate key trends within the media and advertising industries along with the technocultural, legal, regulatory and political environment online behavioural advertising operates within.

Situated within contemporary scholarly debate and interest in recursive media that involves intensification of discourses of feedback, personalization, recommendation, co-production, constructivism and the preempting of intent, this book represents a departure from textual criticism of advertising to one based on exposition of networked means of inferring preferences, desires and orientations that reflect ways of being, or moods of information.'

Review
'The confusing yet omnipresent world of digital media require analysis of specific sites and types of content. One could do no better than turn to Andrew McStay's The Mood of Information to learn about some fascinating yet troubling developments in the region of "behavioural advertising," the tracking of marketing activities by consumers. I endorse this volume for those interested in the reconfiguration of privacy that its topic explores.'

-- Mark Poster, Professor Emeritus, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Irvine

Average video gamer 37; average game buyer 41

According to a study from the Entertainment Software Association, not only is the average game player 37, but the age of the average buyer is 41. From The Telegraph here.

Digital literacy

It's not reading that's the problem, it's writing.

This is the conclusion of the gaming industry who note a paucity of students able to write programmes. Where kids in the 80s (me!) wrote little programmes to create the most basic of avatars, computer science today is off the curriculum if favour of learning applications. An article from the BBC here notes that one solution is a tiny device called the Raspberry Pi. This is a whole computer squeezed onto a single circuit board, about the same size as a USB disc. It costs around £15 and can be plugged into a TV with the aim of making a computer cheap and simple enough to allow anyone to write programmes.

No cookies without consent

This week saw the implementation of the European privacy law requiring websites within the EU to obtain a visitor's consent to install a cookie in their browser. Seen anything different? No, thought not. As El Reg has it here, only Estonia and Denmark so far have transposed and implemented the new (but long time coming) EC measures. In the UK, businesses have been given one year to get their affairs in order, with no action to be taken against companies that ignore the rule within this period.

Trade associations and the industry have repeated mantra-like for some time that cookies are harmless and make the web work more efficiently. This is of course true; they help us fill in forms and remember preferences. However, we have witnessed a perversion of their use as they track our actions across the web so to profile our movements and dispositions for advertising purposes. This is an invasive use of cookies, if unasked for. We do not expect to be followed around the streets, nor to be eavesdropped upon in the pub.

It comes back to that ol' chestnut: consent. As The Open Rights Group here report, the prognosis does not look good as the new directive does include the word prior in its definition of consent. This has led the advertising industry and the UK government to argue that a user's browser setting might indicate consent, with Ed Vaizey stating in an open letter here that consent 'does not preclude a regulatory approach that recognises that in certain circumstances it is impracticable to obtain consent prior to processing'.

Advertisers bring competing brands to shoppers' minds

The New Scientist reports that whenever advertisers showcase their brands, they also activate competitors' brands in the minds of their target audiences. More here.

PR warfare in social media

Don't be fooled by the curved edges and cartoonesque logos. Soft capitalism is still capitalism and competition. While we're all familiar with the use of social media for PR, less common are social media companies being caught engaging in questionable PR tactics. The Telegraph reports here that Facebook hired Burson-Marsteller, a PR company owned by WPP, Sir Martin Sorrell’s group, to place negative stories about Google in American press outlets. Since the admission, Burson Marsteller has terminated its contract with Facebook.

First injunction deployed against Twitter and Facebook

The UK Telegraph reports that the first injunction specifically banning the publication of information on Facebook and Twitter was issued on Saturday amid growing fears about the culture of secrecy in courts. See here.

The future of digital advertising... from 1994

The archives from Advertising Age have a gem of an article here with Edwin L. Artzt, chairman-CEO of Procter & Gamble Co, remarking on the future of advertising. Providing a timely reminder for how far digital advertising has "progressed" and how many of the the early discourses remain the same (all power to the user!), it's a useful piece for anyone seeking to know where we are in relation to the beginning.

ASA to regulate behavioural advertising

Following legislation to be introduced by the European Union on 25 May requiring behavioural advertisers to gain consent from consumers to collect information, behavioural advertising in the UK will be opt-out. This means that the default is to able to gather users' browsing data. Advertisements will display an icon to allow consumers to refuse companies access to that data. See article from New Media Age here.

NoDPI on “Phorm Interactive”

You may remember well the case of BT/Phorm and their tests and endeavours to launch an advertising platform based on data that travels through the pipes of ISPs. NoDPI, an activist group who fought hard against Phorm and the UK Government, have now brought to light new activities by Phorm in the US. This is verging on the ridiculous, but it seems that they are engaging in what NoDPI describe as 'very amateurish fraud'. According to NoDPI they have falsified clients, technological products [mobile applications], awards, their history, employees' CVs and identities, and even their website. Very very odd. Article and investigation in full from NoDPI here.

The Right to be Forgotten

In the first sign of where Europe may be headed with its privacy regulations, the European Union announced this week that social networking sites and search engines could face court action if they fail to obey new EU data privacy rules. Article from Reuters here.

Foursquare: "What's the point?"

Although I try to stay on top of social media goings-on, Foursquare is one those services that I've never seen much point in sticking with. Besides obvious application for advertisers and marketers interested in reality and location-mining, what's in it for me (and my friends)? As a couple of my undergrads are finding out in their dissertation endeavours, privacy concerns reach fever pitch when it comes to these kind of products. Technology Review offer a useful breakdown of nascent locative services to hit the market that reintroduce people and community into social media. Article here.

Facebook Officials Keep Quiet on Its Role in Revolts

With Facebook playing a starring role in the revolts that toppled governments in Tunisia and Egypt, you might think the company’s top executives would use this historic moment to highlight its role as the platform for democratic change. Instead, they really do not want to talk about it. More from the New York Times here.

Product placement in the UK

From 28 February, branded ingredients and products will be allowed on our TV screens. Product placement will be allowed in dramas and documentaries, soaps, entertainment and sports shows - but will be banned in children's, news, UK-produced current affairs, consumer affairs and religious programmes. UK legislation already bans product placement for tobacco, alcohol, gambling, foods or drinks that are high in fat, salt or sugar, medicines and formula baby milk. More from Guardian.co.uk here.

googleartproject.com

Google have taken super-high resolution pictures of the world's most famous and historic artworks and make them accessible to all using an interior version of Google Streetview to recreate the gallery experience for online visitors. Also, each of the 17 museums involved in the project, including London's Tate and National Gallery, MoMA in New York and Reina Sofia, Madrid, has selected one artwork to be photographed with 'gigapixel' photo capture technology; that takes the viewer beyond what the naked eye can usually see, a 7 billion pixel representation that shows the texture of the paint, the individual brush-strokes, the cracks, the patina.
www.googleartproject.com

Ofcom to review parts of Digital Economy Act

The Government has asked Ofcom to review the Digital Economy Act’s proposed measures to restrict copyright infringement. Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt said there were questions over whether proposals, which include allowing courts to block sites that persist in sharing copyrighted music, would work in practice. The Government has been under pressure from various parties, including the Open Rights Group, to reassess the Digital Economy Act, which was introduced and passed during the previous Labour administration. See more at New Media Age here and the Open Rights Group here.

Social networking leads to sooner sex?

According to a survey carried out by Shape and Men's Fitness magazines nearly four out of five women and three of five men say they believe texting, Facebook and other social media tools for staying connected cause new couples to jump into bed faster. More from Reuters here.

Newspapers: boldly going forward

For some years newspapers have witnessed dwindling sales and by extension revenue from advertising. A headache for proprietors and subject of many a media studies/journalism seminar, there is little in the way of a clear cut answer. As The Economist reports, there are signs that newspapers are being proactive and trying numerous ways to innovate their way out of decline. Article here

Surveillance and Society: Marketing, Consumption and Surveillance

Surveillance and Society have just released their new edition titled Marketing, Consumption and Surveillance. All papers are available here. Ably edited by Detlev Zwick and Jason Pridmore a brief scan reveals some insightful and much needed discussion regarding the relationship between surveillance, internet-based goings-on and marketing/advertising. If you're interested in the role of behavioural advertising within all of this, my paper can be found here.

UK tops European use of mobile internet among young people

Findings were revealed in Nielsen's (the consumer and media research organisation) Mobile Youth Around the World study, and revealed that 46% of UK mobile users aged 15-24 had used the mobile internet within the past 30 days. More from New Media Age here.

£58 per Facebook user

There seems to be much ado about Facebook's $50bn valuation by Goldman Sachs. It's interesting do some sums. $50bn translates to roughly £33bn. Divide that by 550 million users and we have £58 per head. That is a significant amount of money to be recouped by advertising and data mining. It is also testament to how much our data is worth to data miners. I for one certainly like to know more about what investors are getting for their money and more about the specifics of what data is gathered, how it is processed and with whom it is shared.

The Year on the Web according to MIT

MIT's Technology review offer their annual account of going-on on the web here. Unsurprisingly Wikileaks issues takes centre-stage but underlying many of the year's issues are concerns over privacy and the fluctuating boundary between public and private life. This is evident at both macro levels where war documents and diplomatic cables were aired to the world, but also at a much more individual level as media comapanies and advertising networks seek to know us in an increasingly more intimate manner. Facebook, Google and Twitter have all stepped up their advertising web programmes and the drive to mine people's interiority, moods, preferences, location, mobility and social behaviour continues to spread in reach.

Public Relations

PR is an industry that seeks not to draw attention to itself. While most people will be aware of what advertising agencies do and who they are (Saatchi and Saatchi perhaps remains the most recognisable in the UK), few would be able to name a PR agency. Beyond the practice of sending out press releases, even less people are able to account for what PR agencies and freelancers do. The Economist offers an excellent overview of the PR industry here beginning with Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays. It concludes by addressing the digital sector, social media, and competition between advertising and PR therein.

Two thirds of US citizens against behavioural tracking

Advertising Age reports here that a clear majority of Americans, 67%, say advertisers shouldn't be allowed to use people's web history to deliver relevant advertising on the web, according to a new Gallup poll. Reminding them that behavioural tracking helps pay for the "free" websites they visit only dampens their opposition somewhat.

Interestingly, as I found when collecting stats and reports for Digital Advertising, this figure of of roughly two-thirds seems to be the figure that keeps on emerging in both the UK and the US.

Product Placement in the UK

Product placement will be allowed on UK television from the end of February 2011, Ofcom confirmed on Monday. Broadcasters will have to alert viewers when programmes containing product placement are aired by using an on-screen logo. More from The Guardian here.

Student protest images

Boston.com has collected 39 striking pictures from the demonstrations in London last week. See all of them here.

Advertising media in 2010

The time of annual roundups is upon us, and reflection on advertising and media from the MediaGuardian reveals that television advertising grows and internet ads surge as industry picks up. Lord Burns, the chairman of Channel 4, recently reflected that when he joined the broadcaster he was told to expect a decline in TV ad revenues of 2% this year. The UK TV ad market has, in fact, turned out to be up 14% year on year and the two biggest commercial broadcasters – ITV and Channel 4 – are in line to do even better, which is proof that the recovery in TV advertising is one of the media stories of 2010. More here.

World's oldest computer recreated in Lego

Google DoubleClick Caught Serving Malicious Ad

DoubleClick, the Google-owned ad technology, has been distributing malware in an online ad served through a number of websites, according to the security researcher who says he discovered the attack. The malware infects users who visit a page where an infected banner ad is displayed. It’s installed as a drive-by download, meaning that users don’t have to click on the ad to be infected, they just have to visit a website when the ad appears on the page. More from Wired here.

From Wikileaks to #ukuncut, Twitter gets political

From keeping the WikiLeaks site alive to helping British anti-austerity protesters outmaneuver riot police, Twitter is entering the Western political mainstream as a powerful tool for dissent. More from Reuters here. So much for Slacktivism eh?

Umberto Eco on Wikileaks

In an article for the French daily newspaper, Libération, Eco argues that technology is like a crab [that goes backwards]. He also points out that in days past, the press would spend its time trying to figure out things kept secret behind the scenes. Nowadays it’s the embassies that are asking the press for the inside story. More from the semiotician and novelist here.

Bradley Manning

The Telegraph has an interesting background article on Bradley Manning here. Among other insights, it describes him designing a version of Facebook years before modern social networking sites took off when living with his mother in Pembrokeshire, Wales, UK.

Advertisers: do not track

The Federal Trade Commission says that so far it has seen no negative effect on advertising from stricter Internet privacy and has backed the creation of a "do not track" option for the Internet that would limit the ability of advertisers to collect consumers' data. More from Reuters here.

Best of the Digital Ad' Decade: The One Club

The One Club has announced the Best of the Digital Decade, its list of the top digital advertising of the past ten years. Over 75 pieces were nominated, judges voted for their favorites, and the top ten pieces were determined, which include AKQA's "Eco:Drive" for Fiat, Burger King's "Subservient Chicken," from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, and Fallon's "The Hire," for BMW. All the winners, along with backstories on how each was achieved, can be viewed online at the One Club's Digital Decade site here.

Adbusters "Buy Nothing Day": 27/11/10

Competitive sexuality in advertising

As recently as the beginning of the century, ads and articles tended to idealise independence from societal expectations. The line was often quasi-feminist, offering encouraging stories about women who were doing fine without men – or who had chosen to stop colouring their hair or wearing makeup. Today, ads and articles in the same magazines push a much more sexualised agenda of rebellion. More from The Guardian here.

Activism after Clicktivism

Clicktivism: the pollution of activism with the logic of consumerism. More from Adbusters here.

Digital serfdom: who owns your identity?

The Economist observes here that both Google and Facebook are run like absolute monarchies in which hundreds of millions of users (digital serfs, some might say) have created identities. Rather like mercantilist countries in the offline realm, both companies operate policies to protect this asset.

Questions are raised about digital feudalism and the law. Google believes users own information such as their e-mail address books, and should be able to take it with them wherever they go on the web. The company even has a “data liberation” team that builds tools to simplify such imports and exports. In contrast, Facebook argues that the owner of the e-mail address, not someone who has collected it, should decide where and how it is shared

Mining Twitter

Unhappy customers often tweet their gripes—now AT&T, a US telecomms company, is mining those complaints to improve its service. More from Technology Review here.

UK has the largest online economy in the world

The UK has the most developed internet economy in the world with the largest online e-commerce market per person, researchers from Boston Consulting Group have found. More from The Telegraph here.

Digital chickens (coming home to roost)

For some years commentators on social media have been describing that yesterday's indiscretions posted online will come back to haunt us. It seems this is happening sooner rather later. For example, the NYT reports that Ms. Ball, a Democrat, was stunned when she found out that six-year-old party pictures were circulating online. In them, she was wearing a Santa cap and provocative lacy hosiery while holding and putting her mouth around a sex toy. The story went viral, getting attention from news media outlets as varied as Gawker and National Public Radio. More cases here.

Location-based marketing

As of August, only 4 percent of American adults who used the Internet also used location-based services, which allow people to “check in” to physical locations via their cellphones to earn coupons or keep up with friends, the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project reported last week. And only 1 percent of Internet users are on such services on any given day, an indication that those who do use the services still have not integrated them into their daily lives.

Still, companies like Foursquare and Gowalla, two of the leaders in the location-based services market, have had no trouble raising money from investors. Advertisers are on track to spend $1.8 billion on location-based marketing in 2015, according to ABI Research, a technology market research firm.

As the NYT reports here, all that's missing are the people.

Vintage social media ads

Back to the future indeed! Reposted from AdLab here.

Struq: behavioural advertising

The Telegraph report here that Struq, a web-based behavioural advertising firm, has artfully dodged any accusations of “snooping” on users, which had been a concern in the wake of the widely reported Phorm disaster. Unlike Phorm, their systems are not reliant on ISP's gateways and deep-packet inspection. While web-based behavioural targeting has been around for a decade, Struq have found a winning targeting formula with advertisers reporting returns reaching as high as £20 in post-click sales for each £1 spent. Consequently, the company has been swamped with requests from brands keen to get in on the action.

Bucking the trend

As Western economies slid towards recession three years ago, media and advertising executives began to ask worrying questions. Would the advertising slump prove structural or cyclical? Would marketing money return to all media, or just a few? The answers are becoming clear. There are two surprises, says Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the world’s biggest ad agency. The first is the health of the American advertising market, which has benefited from government stimulus. The second is the recovery of old media. More from the Economist here.

Cryptome hacked

Computerworld report here that the whistleblowing, government-document sharing site Cryptome was hacked and defaced this weekend. All 54,000 Cryptome hosted files were deleted.

After its site was restored and Cryptome could view emailed notifications, Cryptome posted the steps of the hack. First, its EarthLink email account was "accessed by unknown means and its access password changed." Using that email address, the hacker then requested information about Cryptome's multiple accounts. The Cryptome.org management account was accessed at Network Solutions (NSI) and all "54,000 files (some 7GB) were deleted and the account password changed."

Phorm: courting costs

The behavioural advertising company Phorm are still unable to make a profit. The Guardian report here that Phorm have announced they are losing $15.6 (£9.8) million a year. This comes having refocused efforts away from the UK and onto Brazil and South Korea.

To add to woes, The Open Rights Group report here that Phorm's actions (along with BT) where they illegally tested behavioural technology using deep-packet inspection (a means of identifying the content of web traffic as it passes through ISP's gateways) has resulted in the EU Commission taking the UK to court (the EU's Court of Justice). This is due to unadequate implementation of European privacy directives. European Commission press release here.

Mining reality report

In Japan, sci-fi prophecy is now becoming reality, with the first digital billboards tailored to passing shoppers tried out in malls

In Steven Spielberg's sci-fi film Minority Report, an interactive ad shouts to Tom Cruise's character "John Anderton, you could use a Guinness!" – having identified him by scanning his iris. In Japan, sci-fi prophecy is now becoming reality, with the first digital billboards tailored to passing shoppers tried out in malls.

Produced by the electronics giant NEC, the ad signage uses facial recognition software and can identify the shopper's gender (with 85-90% accuracy), ethnicity and approximate age. More from the Guardian here.

Multitasking media culture

A new Ofcom report finds that "consumers" are spending almost half (45 per cent) of their waking hours watching TV, using their mobiles and other communications devices. They are also using several types of media at the same time – with the average person cramming 8 hours 48 minutes of media into just over seven hours during the average day. Ofcom report here.

My afternoon at the BFI

I had a thoroughly enjoyable day at the BFI Media Studies conference today where I was invited to talk about the state of advertising studies and deliver a paper titled "the cultural contours of digital advertising". Organised for post-16 and A-level lecturers and teachers I was not sure what to expect, and I did wonder if I'd pitched my paper at the wrong audience given that it flows straight from the book I'm finishing off (The Mood of Information, Continuum). I'm glad to say the paper seemed to go down well with kind comments and rigorous questioning offered at the end. What surprised me most was how engaged people were. In the media studies field there are few people interested in advertising and even less so digital advertising, and on more than one occasion I've been asked "so why internet advertising"? Having zero experience in teaching A-level Media Studies I was also interested to find out about what goes on over the other side of the fence. I'm glad to say there appears to be very interesting work that puts a few undergraduate programmes I know to shame. I spoke with Andrew Jones [edited for incorrect surname] afterwards (who attended my talk and seminar) who looks to be up to all sorts of interesting stuff with local activist groups, the Museum of London and a variety of other means of politicising media studies and harnessing new media. I was also interested to hear there is little in the way of a network for A-level media studies lecturers. It seems ripe and timely to me to cross the divide and for us to better understand the other via a bolt on network to MeCCSA. I think from a teacherly point of view, there may be a few lessons we ourselves can learn.

Thinkbox vs. Clay Shirky

Writing for the guardian.co.uk, Tess Alps (chief executive of Thinkbox, the marketing body for UK commercial TV) has an interesting little article here describing her gripes with the TV vs. digital dichotomy.

Foursquare privacy leak

While receiving a $20 million boost in venture capital Foursquare also have a leak. Wired in two articles report here and here that Jesper Andersen, a white-hat hacker, found Foursquare was leaking user data on a massive scale in plain violation of its privacy policy,

The company asked the white hat, Jesper Andersen, to give it nine days to deal with the problem that it was publishing all users’ location data to the entire web despite its privacy-policy promise to users that “You can opt out of such broadcasts through your privacy settings.”

So when the nine days were up, the company told Andersen in a private e-mail Tuesday morning that it had fixed the “privacy leak” (the company’s own words) by modifying how an existing privacy setting worked, and that it had no solution yet for two other privacy holes that Andersen also reported, saying it was trying to figure out how to balance usability with privacy. As for its blog, the only thing the company disclosed Tuesday was that it had closed a monster round of financing: $20 million in venture capital from some of the hottest investors in the country. Nor did the company contact users to tell them that it had found and sort-of fixed a hole in its service that violated the promises it had made to users.

Ofcom opens debate on net neutrality

Net neutrality debates have been far quieter here in the UK than they have in the US. However, this should hopefully soon change in response to Ofcom's call for responses regarding proposals for network operators and internet service providers (ISPs) to stem or accelerate the flow of traffic over the web.

The regulator is asking respondents: “How enduring do you think congestion problems are likely to be on different networks and for different players?” and “do you think that unconstrained traffic management has the potential for (or is already causing) consumer/citizen harm?". Ofcom is also seeking evidence to prove that “economic and or consumer value [is] generated by traffic management”.

Firstly though, what is net neutrality? Simply, it is the idea that the internet works best if it is not tampered with and when all packets are routed with the same priority, and that certain traffic is not prioritized over other traffic. It also involves treating internet access as a telecommunications service rather than as an information service. Net neutrality is thus an endeavour to keep the internet open, accessible and "neutral" to all users, application providers and network carriers. Many heavyweights have come out in support of net neutrality. Listing companies such as Google, Yahoo, eBay and Amazon, as well as technical innovations such as blogging and VoIP, Vint Cerf, speaking on behalf of Google, has similarly argued that a neutral network has supported a vast array of innovation that might never have occurred if central control of the network had been required by design. It is based on the idea that the internet works best if it is not tampered with and when all packets are routed with the same priority, and that certain traffic is not prioritized over other traffic. This involves treating internet access as a telecommunications service rather that as an information service, which means that providers cannot discriminate among customers or traffic.

Through this Vint Cerf refers to the end-to-end structure where control lay with users at the ends of the network, rather than at a centre. He offers the example of security where users choose the level of security, what browsers to employ, or what Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to assemble audio communications with. This contrasts with traditional telephony and cable television networks where decisions are centralized, rather than with users. Moreover, he continues to make the case that internet protocol (IP) was designed to be an open standard that allows for the separation of the network and the applications that run over them.

The traffic management system based on deep-packet inspection represents tampering at the core of the network. Although questions over throttling and differentiation of packets are significant, of greater importance in my view is net neutrality conceived in relation to the undue use of network gateways for the purposes of control where different stakeholder interests exist and overlap. The widening powers of Ofcom granted through the Digital Economy Act 2010 represent a blurring of Ofcom’s role, supposedly to protect competition and the public interest, to one that the Open Rights Group have described here as ‘altering market access and conditions in favour of incumbent players.'

(Wired have a useful up to date assessment of the US broadband situation here)

22 Percent of Internet Time Is Social

Interesting article here from the New York Times describing a recent Nielsen report that reveals that Twittering, commenting, blogging, sharing and “liking” now fill up 22 percent of all time spent online each month. Nielsen published statistics on Tuesday saying that people spend one in every four and a half minutes of their online time on a social network or blog. In the aggregate, Web users spend a total of 110 billion minutes on social Web sites and blogs each month.

Google accused of criminal intent over StreetView data

Google is "almost certain" to face prosecution for collecting data from unsecured wi-fi networks, according to Privacy International (PI). The BBC report here that the search giant has been under scrutiny for collecting wi-fi data as part of its StreetView project.

Google has released an independent audit of the rogue code, which it has claimed was included in the StreetView software by mistake, but PI is convinced the audit proves "criminal intent".

"The independent audit of the Google system shows that the system used for the wi-fi collection intentionally separated out unencrypted content (payload data) of communications and systematically wrote this data to hard drives. This is equivalent to placing a hard tap and a digital recorder onto a phone wire without consent or authorisation," said PI in a statement.

This would put Google at odds with the interception laws of the 30 countries that the system was used in, it added.

UK Office of Fair Trading allows self-regulation of behavioural advertising

Trade representatives have scored a big win (or a pronounced "phew") for the behavioural advertising industry as the Office of Fair Trading has given internet advertisers a chance to self-regulate behavioural advertising, but said it will also draw up plans to crack down "should industry action prove ineffective". In August last year, the OFT launched an investigation into how companies, such as Google, Microsoft and the controversial behavioural targeting firm Phorm, use data gleaned on the habits and personal information of web users to target internet advertising. The OFT has today said that, for now, it lends its backing to a self-regulatory approach through the online advertising trade association, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB). More from The Guardian here.

Google Will Allow Users to Opt Out of Analytics

ClickZ reports here that in a nod to mounting concerns about privacy, Google is now letting users of most Internet browsers opt out of being tracked by its Analytics tool. "Even though Google Analytics doesn't reveal personal information, we believe in giving users more choice and control whenever possible," a company lawyer wrote on the Google blog. "This means the information from your visit will not be sent to Google Analytics or included in its reports." The opt-out comes in the form of a browser add-on that prevents Google Analytics from tracking online behavior. The add-on is currently in beta mode and available for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google's own browser, Chrome.

Facebook: new privacy controls

Mark Zuckerberg admits settings had become too complicated but denies company is trying to force people to share their data. Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a simplified method for controlling privacy on the giant social network tonight, acknowledging it had become too complicated but insisting his company was not trying to force people to share their data. More from the The Guardian here.

Apple overtakes Microsoft as biggest tech company

Apple's shares rose as much 2.8 per cent on Nasdaq on Wednesday, as Microsoft shares floundered, briefly pushing its market value above $229 billion, ahead of its longtime rival. Both stocks ended down after a late-day sell-off, but Apple emerged ahead with a market value of about $222 billion, compared with Microsoft's $219 billion, according to Reuters data. More here.

The Age of Artificial Life

The broadcast media have been bizarrely quiet over the dawning of synthetic biology. As an article from the The Economist here explains, Craig Venter, Hamilton Smith and their colleagues have developed a creature without an ancestor that is capable of reproducing on its own. They have also demonstrated that information is indeed the essence of life. What it is, and how it lives, depends entirely on a design put together by scientists of the J. Craig Venter Institute and held on the institute’s computers in Rockville, Maryland, and San Diego, California.

Google and Apple to dominate mobile advertising

The Guardian reports here that Google's $750m acquisition of the advertising network company AdMod has been approved by the US Federal Trade Commission - because Apple's entry into the mobile advertising market with its iAds product suggests there is already enough competition. The FTC said that although the combination of the two leading mobile advertising networks - Google and AdMob - raised serious antitrust issues, those were overshadowed by recent developments in the market.

In the Big Brother house

The Open Rights Group write here that there's much to celebrate in the change of government, particularly in regards to privacy concerns. The highlight that much of the Lib Dem’s pre-election Freedom Bill seems to have been essentially cut and pasted in, including of digital special interest:

- The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next
generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
- Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
- The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater
transparency.
- Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
- The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
- Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
- Further regulation of CCTV.
- Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
- A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences.

Abortion services to be advertised on UK television for first time

The Guardian reports here that the first commercial to offer advice on abortion services will be screened on British TV next week provoking an enthusiastic welcome from advocates of women's sexual health, and outrage from anti-abortion groups.

Time for a loo break?

AdLab report here on a Nielsen ethnographic study of media consumption behavior. After crunching the numbers, AdLab find that 20% of the people sampled are probably sitting in front of commercials not doing anything else, possibly paying attention.

Regulation: Google and Facebook

The Economist has weighed in here on the recent privacy furore over the two best-known internet companies arguing that Google and especially Facebook should change the way they look after people’s personal information. Unusually for a newspaper that distrusts government intervention they state that plainly there are real grounds for concern, particularly in regards to Google's claim that it discovered that its software had been accidentally recording private information for several years (see here).

AdAge on Zuckerberg

Advertising Age has an interesting opinion piece here on Zuckerberg, the "social web", Open Graph, and the need for opt-in approaches. Although arguing that privacy is now an outdated concept (along with Zuckerberg), the article suggests however that Facebook make errors in their opt-out approaches, and tendency to push a little too far and wait for public acceptance or outcry. The backlash in this case has inspired hackers to develop transparency tools that demonstrate the site’s privacy threats as Wired report here.

Reverse photoshopping

Striking a classic deconstructionist Adbusting pose, a bunch of outdoor posters have literally had the Photoshop treatment. More from ekosystem here.

Facebook Executive Answers Reader Questions

Facebook and privacy concerns tend to go hand-in-hand. In attempting to clarify and assuage, Elliot Schrage, vice president for public policy at Facebook, answered questions submitted by readers of the New York Times, and argued that 'if Facebook is going to succeed — and we will — it’s not going to be because we think our definition of privacy and user control is better than yours. It will be because we’ll do the best job of responding to your questions and concerns about privacy and information control.' Q&A here.

NHS worst for data breaches

The UK's national health service reported the highest number of serious data breaches of any UK organisation since the end of 2007, the Information Commissioner's Office says. More from the BBC here.

Social TV

MIT Tech Review has published its 2010 list of ten technologies that will change the world, and one of them is social television. More from AdLab here.

Facebook: building a web where the default is social

The BBC report here that Facebook has set out its stall to unseat Google and be at the heart of the web experience as it becomes more social. This is achieved through what Zuckerberg calls "your social graph" to guide users online, and an open graph protocol to let publishers tag their content by type along with a "Like" button that partner sites put on their webpage to indicate what they like on a website, be it photographs, news items, clothes or music. That information will then be stored by Facebook in the way it already stores connections between people. Advertising Age record here Ian Schafer, CEO of Deep Focus, commenting that "Facebook potentially could power an all-knowing behavioral-targeting platform the likes of which we've never seen before."

This comes as Facebook are under renewed scrutiny as data protection authorities from a range of countries held a teleconference this week to discuss how they can work together to protect what they see as a steady erosion of privacy. The European Union too is studying what role it can play. Facebook added fuel to the debate by deciding in December 2009 to substantially change its privacy settings, effectively making members' profiles more openly accessible unless users altered the settings themselves (see Reuters here).

Google reveals government data requests and censorship

Google has released details about how often countries around the world ask it to hand over user data or to censor information. Brazil tops the list with 3,663 data requests, the US 3,580 and the UK third with 1,166. More from the BBC here.

Background to the Hitler spoof

Derived from Downfall, the German film acclaimed for its portrayal of Hitler's last days, it's become one of the best known internet memes of recent years. The BBC have some interesting background to it here.

Twitter unveils advertising model

The BBC here, Advertising Age here and New Media Age here describe that Twitter will allow brands to pay to post ‘promoted tweets’ – updates that will feature in search results as well as in the brand’s feeds – so they can reach a wider audience than just their followers. The first set of advertisers includes Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks and Virgin America.

Social media and the UK election

Much was made of the Obama campaign and the harnessing of social media so as to generate groundswell support. The UK elections also see adoption of digital campaigning, although for differing strategic ends. The Guardian has an illuminating article here highlighting Conservative's to need to "normalise" the idea of voting Conservative and for Labour to motivate existing support. The Liberal Democrats are simply seeking to be heard, although are receiving good coverage from Contagious here. Parties have also been employing online advertising and SEO so as to push themselves up the rankings.

iPad: heard it all before?

As we've all now heard, the iPad has sold 300,000+ units in the US and the Tablet of Jobs is set to revolutionise media, in particular how news is delivered. Although the 1990s was full of such multimedia rhetoric, I particularly enjoyed this clip from 1981 first posted on AdLab.

Judge Approves $9.5 Million Facebook ‘Beacon’ Accord

Wired describe here that a US federal judge on Wednesday approved a $9.5 million settlement to a class action lawsuit challenging Facebook’s program that monitored and published what users of the social networking site were buying or renting from Blockbuster, Overstock and other locations. The case concerned allegations Facebook’s now defunct “Beacon” program breached federal wiretap and video-rental privacy laws. Terms of the settlement, in which Facebook denied any wrongdoing, require the site to finance what the deal calls a “Digital Trust Fund” that would issue more than $6 million in grants to organizations to study online privacy.

The new privacy center, according to terms of the deal, shall “fund and sponsor programs designed to educate users, regulators and enterprises regarding critical issues relating to protection of identity and personal information online through user control, and to protect users from online threats.”

Market research wants to open your skull

The New Scientist has a short article and video here describing developments in market research and the use of neuroscience.

New media and the coming election

The Economist has an interesting article this week describing that British politicians are irredeemably analog. Labour and Tory insiders agree that the Obama model is hard to export beyond America’s unusual polity, with its weak party organisations, primary races and endless, costly campaigns. “Almost any other Western democracy would be a more useful comparator for us,” says one. Article here.

Anonymous citizen journalist wins George Polk Award

A video filmed on a mobile phone made history when it won the George Polk Award for Journalism this year. Not only was it the first video to win in the newly-created videography category, it was also the first video in the Polk's 61-year history awarded to an anonymous citizen journalist. More from MobileActive here with video available here.

Distinguishing public and private

Most likely a rebuttal to Mark Zuckerberg's call for a redefinition of privacy as a social norm, danah boyd (lack of cap intentional) in her keynote address at the SXSWi festival argues that 'privacy is not dead'. Citing both the recent Google Buzz debacle and Facebook's changes to privacy settings in December she argued that in the best case there is a basic misunderstanding of what users want or, in the worst case, a new corporate strategy of trying to get as many users locked in right away, regardless of the consequences. More from CNet here.

The IAB Roadshow

An enjoyable day was had today as the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) rolled into town. The venue was Bournemouth University and the name of the event, "IAB Digital Talent Roadshow". Key speakers included Kieron Matthews from the IAB, Sam Michel from Chinwag, May Race from the COI, Natasha Spencer Warren from Mindshare and Nick Turner from AKQA. Andy Oakes from New Media Age also spoke and was decent enough to fork out for drinks after.

There were a number of highlights, and Nick's account of the lengths wannabe creatives will go to gain the attention of potential employers was certainly illuminating (if not a little frightening for Nick!). This involved stalking across various social media channels and the obtaining of quite personal information so as to direct Nick to a video message most creatively and amusingly delivered. Discussion of social media and reputation management proved a key theme for the day. As Mark Zuckerberg relatively recently mentioned, privacy as a social norm is undergoing a significant rethink. Potentially a somewhat disturbing trend when seen through the guise of peer surveillance, it isn't without its funny side as Nick highlighted with a video from The Onion in his presentation:




Kieron also reinforced the social media message urging students, in true Web 2.0 fashion, to be part of the conversation and to "be digital". Andy, Sam and Kieron also had tales to tell of why students and agency employees should be mindful that what is posted and said on Facebook and Twitter pages can come back to haunt both sooner and later. The primacy of search was underlined as a hot area for potential graduates, not without significant rewards for students interested in learning the arts of optimisation. Whilst none of this is revelatory, the need from industry for digital specialists is there and jobs do exist for graduates with savvy who are willing to go that extra distance.

Augmented Identity

An interesting post here from Technology Review about an application that lets users point a smart phone at a stranger and immediately learn about them through a combination of computer vision, cloud computing, facial recognition, social networking, and augmented reality.

Google Energy

The Federal Regulatory Energy Commission has granted Google Energy, a wholly owned subsidiary of the search giant, the right to behave like a utility and sell energy, capacity and services at market rates. More from Wired here.

PageRank-Type Algorithm From the 1940s Discovered

A paper written by Massimo Franceschet at the University of Udine in Italy is currently receiving much attention for recognising that PageRank's algorithims derive from a technique developed by the Harvard economist Wassily Leontief in 1941. More commentary over at Technology Review.

Ban all advertising in public spaces

The guardian.co.uk reports here that a ban on advertising in all public spaces and limits on shopfront marketing will be proposed on today (Monday) by the leftwing thinktank Compass in what could be a rare alliance between the left and rightwing moralists.

Google translation phone "two years away"

Search giant Google has said that it is working on a phone that can translate live, automatically between languages. More from Telegraph.co.uk here.