As expected, Facebook has announced changes to their controversial Beacon advertising system where users' off-site purchasing activities can be automatically displayed in the Facebook feed. The New York Times reports these changes: Stories about actions users take on external websites…
Read More Facebook Changes Beacon to How it Should Have Been Designed in the First Place
BusinessWeek reports that Facebook has circled the wagons and might be considered changes to their controversial new Facebook Ads platform: In the wake of mounting criticism, Facebook executives are discussing changes to a controversial advertising tool that publicizes users' Web…
Read More Facebook Mulling Privacy Changes, But Will It Be Sufficient?
Just a friendly reminder that the Reputation Economies in Cyberspace symposium hosted by the Yale Information Society Project is coming up (my original post on the symposium is here). It is being held on December 8, 2007 at Yale Law…
In more chilling news, it has been reported that Google reached a settlement with a group of Israeli council members and will voluntarily turn over the IP address of a blogger accused of slander to a court overseeing the case.…
Read More Google Discloses Blogger’s IP Address (No Subpoena Required)
Recalling the (in)famous DOJ v Google matter, where Google resisted attempts by government to obtain thousands of user search queries, we learn today that federal prosecutors had sought the identities of thousands of people who bought used books from Amazon,…
Read More Feds Sought Identities of Book Buyers; Amazon Resists
I just completed (late) a chapter contribution for the forthcoming International Handbook of Internet Research. My task was to write a review of search engine research, combined with directions for future work. While the lit review in my dissertation provided…
I recently bought an iPhone (my tech-porn for the year), and it has been a pleasurable experience (notwithstanding AT&T's poor coverage in much of my apartment). But I'm troubled by a rumor that has emerged claiming that "Apple is keeping…
Read More Is Apple Collecting Personally Identifiable iPhone Usage Data?
Facebook recently announced Facebook Ads, an attempt to monetize the vast amount of user information that flows through the social networking site (something I warned about previously). Facebook Ads has three main components: Social Ads: Allows marketers to target ads…
Blogging has been light due to other duties, but I wanted to point out a few notable items that deserve attention: Twitter appears to be planning to expand the search offerings, allowing users to search for particular terms within others'…
Wired's Threat Level provides a detailed look at the recently announced "Do-Not-Track" list to help Internet users block online advertisers from recording their browsing habits in support of targeted advertising. (For what its worth, Threat Level predicted this announcement a…
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