The WSJ's Datapocalypse 2010

By Jason Carmel | Aug 2, 2010 2:57:18 PM

The Wall Street Journal has an amazing interactive piece entitled "What They Know" that focuses on the data that is collected and used for tracking and reporting by 50 of the most visited sites on the Web. Play around with it for a while- you get a sense of the massive amounts of data that popular sites such as ebay and CNN.com collect about you behind the scenes and how that data might impact your privacy online.

Unfortunately, the good people at the WSJ couldn't leave it alone with a powerful display of information. Instead of representing an informed understanding of what data companies are tracking, the risks and benefits of collecting and using that data to the end consumer, and an assessment of efforts that are or should be made to improve the system, they got all "DATAPOCALYPSE 2010" on us. Let's unpack a few issues I had from this little suitcase of drama, shall we?

Issue #1: Marketers are spying on Internet users"

This is how the author starts off the article (note the bold was their emphasis, not mine), and it's an exaggeration of the grossest order. "Spying" is not a term one should thrown around lightly. In fact, unless it is literally applied to the act of assassinating someone with an umbrella tip or swallowing something on microfilm, the only people who use the verb "spying" in this context are those who are trying to create controversy. Are marketers "spying" on you as you navigate the web? Of course not. Collecting anonymous data to inform how successfully an audience is consuming certain content is a far cry from sending someone with an accent to open up your home safe and take pictures of your offshore bank account numbers with a very, very tiny camera. Using the term "spying" when you mean "sharing aggregated web data" is from page 12 of the Fox News Handbook of Journalism, and the WSJ needs to be better than that.

Issue #2:  I'm not even going to justify the graphic of the dude with the binoculars with a comment.

"Watchers?" Honestly. The WSJ makes Web Analysts and Data Miners sound as if they are video taping you in the shower.

Issue #3: Exposure Index?

The Exposure Index is the grade that the WSJ folks give to each site to inform the reader of how worried she should be about her data being traded around like prison cigarettes. The WSJ explains its methodology obliquely at best. Volume of trackers and opt-out options are interesting circumstantial factors, but they pale in comparison to an analysis of 1) what information is being shared 2) with whom 3) for what purpose, which this index appears to lack:

• More tracking isn't necessarily more sensitive tracking - The fact that a site collects 200 pieces of information doesn't make that information particularly relevant or sensitive, in aggregate. There is a false assumption permeating the data as it's presented that each data tracker leads to information of equal value. Think about how patently untrue this is. Information concerning which articles I read on espn.com and how ESPN would share that information in an aggregate way, even to 100 third party advertisers is in the grand scheme of evil out there in the world fairly low on the totem pole. Compare that to the very sensitive financial data that is collected and used by PayPal, which gets a better score on the exposure rank, in part because it has significantly fewer trackers.
• Define your terms - I think the infographics would be a lot more telling, and consequently a lot less sensationalist, if they included a key explaining what these 3rd party sites are that get your data and what they are doing with it. When a site shares information with Microsoft, for example, it likely has to do with the Bing! search terms used to get to the site. The trackers are not sniffing your machine to see if that copy of Outlook 2010 is registered. Similarly, "Coremetrics," will sound a lot less ominous if you know that it is a standard web tracking tool that monitors anonymous visitor behavior on site, rather than a collective of Nigerians trying to steal your daughter's college tuition.

I don't want to be misinterpreted here as saying that we shouldn't be concerned about what data is being collected about us on the Web and how it is being used. Privacy policies are impossible to understand, a lot of unnecessarily sensitive data is being collected and stored indefinitely for no discernible advantage to the end user, and, let's be frank here, businesses can't always be trusted to act in good faith when an opportunity to make a killing arises, and the only thing standing in its way are the sanctity of a few words on a web page that no one really reads anyway. I work in the industry and know full well that it needs to change. I applaud the WSJ for releasing its findings and recognizing Internet privacy as an important issue.

My concern here is that the language used by the WSJ inspires panic (check out the results of their poll) rather than conversation, and panic invariably results in knee-jerk reactions and ineffective legislation- both of which are on the way.

Social Media Teams: Different on the Agency Side than Internal

By Ryan Turner | Aug 10, 2009 7:27:51 PM

[Cross-posted from Web Social Architecture.]

One of the things I've been saying a lot lately is that over the next couple years, we can expect to see corporations adding dedicated internal social media teams. Does this sound like a statement of the obvious? Then maybe the corollary is more interesting: I think agencies should do the opposite.

I've seen a similar pattern in a dozen or more corporations in the past year: Responsibility for social media falls to the person or people who get interested and raise their hands. They come from PR, customer service, marketing--and sometimes just out of the woodwork. Good!

In other words, responsibility for social media tends to happen in an ad hoc way--and I actually suspect ad hoc is a perfect way to staff an emerging discipline. And staff it you must.

Social media requires a new combination of skill sets, traversing all the disciplines I just mentioned, but also including strong writing skills, a thick skin, and the social savvy to interact with customers through online media in ways that are on-brand, authentic, human, and bounded by corporate guidelines, policy, and politics. It's hard, but for the right people it's super fun.

For the corporate social media team, representing the brand is a full-time job, with its own discrete challenges and rewards. They need to focus on developing the skills and experience to do it well.

But on the agency side, the whole thing is different. Agencies need to bring to bear their full range of capabilities to support clients' social media efforts, and that includes all the "traditional" digital disciplines--at the agency where I work, we have a 10-person social media team that includes people from development, analytics, search, optimization, user experience, creative, and client services. It's a witchy brew. Our goal is to implode the whole idea of "social media" in the next 2 years.

So my message to agencies is: Adapt, or specialize yourself into an oblivion-vortex!

To be sure, social media specialty agencies (I have friends at several of them) provide a tremendously valuable service with their depth of expertise in social media. But my prediction is, as web marketing evolves further, the breath of expertise brought to bear by "traditional digital" agencies will pose a grave threat to the specialists. They simply won't match digital agencies' capabilities in development, analytics, creative, usability, planning, and optimization.

Seven years ago, we were explaining the idea of online community. Three years ago, we were selling the importance of Web 2.0. Today, we're answering ubiquitous demand from clients that "social media" be included as a component in all our web work. Give it another 2 years and clients will see "web" and "social" as synonymous--data, content, service, identity, content objects, and relationships as integral to a holistic web strategy.

So on the agency side, there should ultimately be no such thing as a "Social Media Team," only a company made of web-savvy, passion-driven professionals who can support all aspects of corporate social media efforts--from concept through implementation.

The nuts and bolts, and rubber meeting the road, and the delivery of the service belong on the client side; and the vision, concept, and creative / conceptual infrastructure are where agencies can help. All in all, I have to admit, it ends up looking a lot like Mad Men, which my 90 year old Grandmother, true story, described as "the most realistic show yet about the '50's."

"It shows," she says, "exactly how we lived."