Four Click Freedom

Facebook and Google are scary.  In this time of economic downturn it is no time for hustlers. When information is at stake, security is a key component to peoples trust and when you abuse this, we could start fighting a long uphill battle in the months to come.

My example here is with advertising. People are still going to have to spend money to get back on top and get their businesses back up and running. The first cuts in budgetary plans are usually at the advertising budgets. But these are also the first to be replaced.

Many people these days are wondering where to put their ad dollars. Print media is said to be dying. Everything is apparently going online, and why not, you really get more specific information that way. But what about the targeting of these ad dollars and the amount you pay. This is starting to create real concern. Google is running a monopoly and adjusting prices based on ‘falsification’ of Adwords’ performance. And sites that have over a million visitors a month are getting the rod because they have to put ads on their sites that only pay them when they get clicked on, greatly devaluing their site.

The real scare comes in when Google and Facebook hide certain critical points that concern your rights in their ‘terms of use.’ By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. Facebook recently said the same thing.

This selling of personal information for any use under the sun is not what I intended when I signed up for these programs. With Facebook I get to choose my friends and who sees my photos and stories. Now that Mr. Matt Zuckerberg says any advertiser can buy anything on my profile, it doesn’t feel quite as private. That is pretty scary to one day run across myself in some book about people in Tianjin.

I for one am not using Facebook anymore. I have had about enough of it anyway and only get on 30 seconds a day to read the feed. Google I am attached to still though. I am even thinking to get the new Google phone. But there is a difference.

Google is an ad agency and they use the information themselves. There is no need for them to sell off their inventory; it does more good in their own hands. As for them being a monopoly, that is probably true, but at least I can still get my mail.

So what about Clickboards.net?….

Unlike both Google and Facebook, Clickboards.net User Agreement will only take about one minute to read and be very straight forward.  The reason being as that every user agreement will be individually created as the user continues to modify their profile.  The user gets to transform their profile by setting their privacy settings, something that is established from the beginning.  As the user baby steps their way into using the platform, the more ability they have to control their social savings network.

The information is never sold, but the use of the information is given to the advertisers.  Advertisers are allowed to make as many requests as they would like when tailoring their ad to reach the directed audience.  However because they don’t need it, they don’t get the information.  As long as they see performance they get their monies worth.  And that is the direction online advertising has taken, completely performance driven.

So the initial user agreement may look something like this:

I agree that all information that I supply in the initial agreement to use this site is confidential and will not be used by third parties.  All information that I garner fit for use through my privacy settings and filters can be used by Clickboards.net and only used internally to help third parties gear their advertisements to something that relatively follows my interests.  My demographic information will not be sold or distributed unless I specify certain information can be used to better target my interests and better facilitate Clickboards.net to deliver more relevant information from advertisers to me.  I have the ability to continuously modify and change this information and previous settings will be relinquished from use by Clickboards.net.

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