On Tue, May 15, 2012 at 4:12 PM, Sean Andrews <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tuesday, May 15, 2012, raghu wrote: >> It is a risky bet, to be sure, but have you seen how college students >> use Facebook? >> -raghu. > > > yes. And it doesn't involve clicking on ads. I think they must think that > user data and data about relationships between users will somehow make a > bundle of money.
You do not seem to be very impressed with Facebook's "user data and data about relationships". I think you are seriously underestimating the quality and quantity of this data. I am not just talking about generic high-level stuff like hobbies, birth dates, anniversaries and music preferences. I am talking about locations, movements, social interactions and detailed Internet histories. Corporations are just scratching the surface on what to do with such enormous databases of personal data. See this NYT article about how Target's new data mining algorithms. Creepy anecdote from the article: Target knew about some girl's pregnancy before her family did: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html That being said, this is a risky winner-take-all game. After all, for every Google, there were a dozen Yahoos, Excites, AltaVistas, AOLs and Netscapes that didn't make it. -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
