Fish Anyone?

I believe that all this hype surrounding online privacy is a red herring, especially with regards to Facebook. I do wonder how many people logged into their "favorite" social network yesterday to see how much easier Mark Zuckerberg has made his settings for us. Most people, however, don't really care about their Facebook profile's privacy. The "Quit Facebook Day" protest groups are barely gaining membership. Quitfacebookday.com for instance, threatening to leave Facebook May 31st, was up to about 23,000 members at writing of this post. Next to Facebook's close to half a billion users, this just doesn't seem very significant (a good article considering this perspective).

Really, do you think whoever describes themselves this way:

"too all dahh hedeaz u no exalliii who u r i keep it all real and thtz a promise i may b a bitch but lease im honest wen u c me around u stop and stare keep yo eyez on meh cuz i ant scared i hav mah own lyfe to b concerned wit i dnt hav time to b worriiied bout urs,"

really cares what their privacy settings are and who or what is reading their prose? OK, admittedly, that's a bit jaded. Most people are generating more comprehensible content. But I maintain that few of them give much thought to their privacy settings and who's consuming their data. So why all the hype? That gets into conspiracy theories, which, despite my fondness for Robert Anton Wilson novels, I'll avoid for now and instead pose the question privacy pundits should be asking - why should people care about privacy?

I'll address a reformulation and broadening of the question - why should people care about their data?

Why people should care about their data

Once the average user broadcasting their interest in Machine Head and gherkin-based appetizers realizes that advertisers actually value this data, the industry is in trouble. This user will demand a cut, with a "what's in it for me" attitude - and rightly so. Now the advertising industry will have to provide more than transparency, clear privacy policies and opt-in/out functionality. And they will be in trouble because there really aren't any clear pathways for them to satisfy this requirement.

Frankly this really excites me and I view it as a huge opportunity. I wrote in my last posting that people should be cooperative players in the publisher, consumer, advertiser mix, enlightened and illuminated. They should stop pretending that advertising is pointless and just an annoyance and embrace the current role that it plays in their quality of life. I can envision a day when I'm standing in front of a urinal, staring at a screen (and peeing) watching content that I'm interested in, say highlights from my basketball team's last game (actually, a TED lecture) paid for by ads that also know my interests. But I'm jumping way ahead...

A mature and non-trivial look at this opportunity will consider the full spectrum of data a user produces both intentionally - user generated content (UGC) - and peripherally - behavioral activity stream, browser/platform data, IP address. And, of course, privacy has a very legitimate place in this discussion, despite my affected belittling of the subject. A user will be able to directly centralize and divvy up all of their data, balancing their privacy preferences against reward. So, by managing the degree and nature of the data they will provide to advertisers, they can determine to what degree they will be inundated with crap ads - more and better data = fewer more relevant ads. And, if they don't want any ads, they should be able to pay for the privilege.

The tools and frameworks necessary to bring all this together are beginning to emerge and are largely part of the decentralized social networking proposed by a number of groups and also discussed in my last post. Key to the user data piece will be personal storage people can use to maintain their data and apps that they can use for its creation and sharing. Because this opportunity will come with the convergence of a number of other developing elements, it will be most interesting to watch its initial formulation and formation and subsequent evolution.

Early services will have to find that value-add and solve for more challenging socio-economic challenges such as arresting data from the current custodians, establishing mutual trust between the advertisers and consumer and finding adequate rewards for consumers to engage. I don't believe that pushing privacy is the way. People won't choose a path by being told what to do, they must find their way through experiences that prove there is value.