Four Click Freedom

It kind of struck me today how easy it is to protect myself in China.  Everyone else who wants to copy me can, because it is just as easy for them to protect themselves as well.  But the thing that is most important impediment that must be in place is to at least keep out your competitors.  Yes I say that everyone can copy a Clickboard, but that they can not copy my logo.   Big deal they will still copy my logo and my moving pointer ‘clicker icon’.  I mean the little hand pointer that moves back and forth encouraging people to click, well I guess that is a given and everyone is going to have to use that.  And the little star at the end saying that the coupon will connect them to Clickboards.net, well they might use that too.

And if in the end they do connect the coupons and discounts to my site what am I to do.  Especially if someone keeps redeeming more and more coupons.

Well if in fact I find the technology to tag the coupons that are sent to my site, well guess what, they will also be tagged.  Just like the users who log in to my site, the coupons themselves when connected to my site will have to be logged in.  They will go into a bay at first to be authenticated.  After a few checks for multiples and validity they will then be sent to the users account.  This is in fact the downfall of my site.  Pre-authenticated Clickboards being sent to users profiles so they can earn points and basically live for free.  The bay is the most important element.

But if in fact mobile coupons and Clickboards do in fact get sent to my site there will be no problem.  What you have to see here is that websites will eventually be talking to one another.  There is no more static, there is no interactive, there is now multi-active.  Meaning you will be on more than one website at once.  They will be acting together to produce an end product. All from different suppliers, all for different users.

Just like credit cards verify account balances, websites will be updated continuously based on input, and the output will at the same time be updating a third site, or the congruous site which is the harmonious extension of the site that you are currently experiencing from the meld of sites which you are viewing.

Keeping people out is not a problem.  Having multiple sites acting together is.  But for now, you can practice hacking me when the site is ready, I enjoy the attention and don’t mind the mess, I have time to clean it up and learn from the experience. Hopefully this will happen in the beginning, but that is still a couple months down the road.

This is a really interesting statement, so I thought I would post about it.  Some years ago I would say I used to use my social security number to sign up for anything.  I mean even at the super market they sometimes wanted it.  I asked my parents at the time what they thought, and it kind of just seemed necessary.  Later on I started to refuse and it turns out they really didn’t need it.  Same with my phone number, I usually have never given that out.  And did people from every corner of the earth know who I was?  I doubt it, it’s really just a reference number.  I’m sure the higher authorities could tap into my file, but I would still say I am pretty private.

Now I am not arguing that I feel free to give away information and that I am not scared that someone will be able to access and use information to stalk me.  Rather I am discussing what privacy is.

Privacy is actually a method of control.  When people built motes around their castles, it wasn’t really to be private, it was to control who could get in.  Thus privacy on the Internet is the ability to control who can see you.

But unlike the mote, these days privacy and control must be a two way street.  But there is no loss here.  Actually providing advertisers with more information allows them to provide you with more information.  And this is not a battle to kill the advertiser, or the Internet, or all those who sell something, rather it is the battle for optimizing mutual interest.  We all lead simple lives and actually think our buying habits are rather simple too.  So why do we need to see all this advertising?  Well the fact is we don’t.  But we do need to see the advertising that is relevant to us, and the only way to do that is to provide information that matters.

I think if I was tracked for one month to see what my buying habits were, thus giving away my privacy and control, the advertising that I received would be far less.  So how many cannibals are going to cross over my mote and climb the walls to get into my castle when all I’ve got inside is my work and my home cooked meal (although they might want to eat that)?

Yes this title is in fact true.  But in reality don’t you always feel the more you give the less you receive?  By this I mean the more you let people know about you the harder it is for them to target you.  You know how hard it is to buy your best friend a birthday gift.  I think this could be true with advertising too.  You can actually develop more control and more privacy by giving away more of yourself.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Privacychoice Stops Advertisers from Profiling You (lifehacker.com)
• Congressman, privacy groups challenge FTC Web-ad policy (news.cnet.com)
• FTC warns of “day of reckoning” for online advertisers (arstechnica.com)

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?….

Read the rest of this entry »

Well the debate these days is often about privacy when advertisers want to gather information about you.  This comes into light especially with the new Google phone.  Now everything you do is categorized and kept for later use by retailers.  Well this is really where the fun stops.

As a user and customer, I don’t want everything I do stored in some database for the use by a third party or even Google for that matter.  Why? I have no authority over my own habits and what everyone else can know about me.  There really is no upside to me giving my information away, either knowingly or unknowingly.  Where is my privacy, where are my filters, where is my say over what I want to see?  Basically advertisers these days regurgitate exactly what I’m doing now.  Adwords, Ha!

What I really want is something that is intuitive.  And this is only possible through my own making.  Yes I actually want something to track my habits, but I want the ability to maintain and fine tune my own personal shopping history to my liking.  I may not buy a computer every day or even a phone, but I am really into them and I want to know what is on sale every week.  Who is going to know this through a shopping history.

The only thing the Google phone can do is tell you all about your perishable items.  Things you buy constantly or the places you go constantly.  Is there really a benefit to this? Not really.  How much information can you get out of me knowing that I buy deli meats every time I go to the grocery store.  What I really want to know is when the ready made pizza dough is on sale because I love to make pizza.  Or maybe I’m waiting to find a deal on a nice wallet from Banana Banana.  And online I may not look everyday but I need to know when JC Nickel is going to have a leather jacket at a discount.

Google is really coming to an end in terms of ad sales.  Have you ever looked into SEO?  It is pretty bogus.  If I design my site to have the best key words, I will get to the top of the list.  Am I talking about what is really important, probably not.

Shopping history is designed by a user.  Yes the Clickcard stats are important, but the profile must be tweaked by the user to add the most impact from the actual information gathered.