Kevin Strong said:
Tim wrote: "if they do not profit by the content of the forum as in postings, then there is a huge market in compiling names, addresses, email contacts, etc., which are a valuable asset to onsell to third parties. "
That’s an entirely different ball of wax than ownership of content that we’ve been discussing for 11 pages now. (Okay, minus the popcorn references, maybe about 4).
Sure, there’s money to be made in compiling demographics of your users. That’s no different from Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc. For that matter, it’s no different than pretty much any mainstream media company or retail business that keeps (and sells) their customers’ demographic and purchasing information. It’s all part and partial of selling eyeballs to advertisers. (And that’s the name of the game.)
What I’m not seeing is any reason to expect my spam filter to be kicked into overdrive solely as a result of VS buying a forum of which I’m a member. If VS wants to crawl over my forum posts to see if they can target advertising to me, that’s their business. I post the stuff to a publicly viewable forum, so I have no expectation of privacy. There’s probably 3rd-party bots pouring over this forum looking for trends even without Bob’s knowledge or consent. Again–it’s public, it’s on the internet, you can’t stop it.
That VS owns a bunch of web sites and uses that to their commercial advantage isn’t a bad thing. They’re in business to make money off of the forums they purchase, and compiling demographic information is how they do that. I’ve got similar analytics on my own blog in terms of who visits it, when, etc. that I could use to commercial advantage if I wanted to monetize the site. The data is out there and easy to use. I’m sure Bob uses it to various extents in running this site.
If it’s out there in cyberspace, someone’s eventually gonna find it and try to profit off of it. I can’t stop it any more than I can stop the grocery store from selling my buying habits to the cat food companies, or the county clerk’s office selling my real estate tax records to real estate data miners. It’s all legal. It’s the “information age,” and we’re stuck living in it.
Later,
K
We’re talking about MLS…but to reference the nearest example (bad), let’s look at LySOL for a moment.
When he pulled the plug the first time, no warning, no contacts…I was on the phone with him a LOT trying to at least get the chat back up, as we had no other forum to communicate with, and nobody had thought (then) to compile e-mail addresses.
When he finally told me he was going to sell the site, that the forum data was worthless, as in zero dollar amount…but what was worth a LOT of money was the personal data.
I had a bad moment or two over that.
His idea seemingly was to sell all your IGRD data to the highest bidder.
I know from another phone conversation that someone who just sold their site was trying to buy LySOL.
When the original guy put the IGRD back up so we could “update our purchases”, I went everywhere (by then we had other sites) and told everyone to zero everything.
If you just deleted, he’d catch it…but by the time backup after backup had occurred, and he didn’t catch it, he lost a whole lot of that data.
Since that time, nothing of a personal nature shows up on forums.
If they want real names (like OGR does), I drop out.
Real names…that’s a joke.
How many “fake” real names do you think existed on, oh, the Aristo Forum?
So, your personal data, where you live, what you own, buying habits, are worth a BIG amount to those marketers who would tailor ads to you.
Remember I said, if you have Ghostery and AdBlockPlus, make sure it’s updated?
And if you don’t have it, get it?
What do you think those trackers do, anyway?
Right now on MLS, VigLink, OpenX, and Google Analytics are showing, and blocked, on the main forum page.
Are they bad?
You want to take a chance?
Main page here is GoogleAnalytics and OpenX.
Aristo is nothing.
Garden Railways is Google AdSense, GoogleAnayltics, and AddThis.
Pirate 4X4, a VS owned site, is 12 trackers.
Amazon Associates, DoubleClick, eXelete, Google+1, Google Analytics, gumgum, InfoLinks, newrelic, OpenX, ScoreCard Research Beacon, VibrantAds, and VigLinks.
Now that you have some data, watch and see what happens with MLS.
These guys make their money on ads. They sell your data to the advertisers to target you.
They track you.
Load the programs, and find a throw away e-mail address for signing up to forums you may not trust fully.
Will MLS go that way? Who knows. My crystal ball is in the shop right now.
My philosophy is better safe than sorry.
And, yes, I get targeted ads on trackers not initially caught to those throw away e-mail addresses. I then report them, and sometimes am able to get them blacklisted.
That’s fun!
TOC
Mind you they tried very hard to have me change it to my real name! OTOH it doesn’t really matter, for good reason I have my real name in the copyright notices in every video.
