Are Companies Sharing Your Purchase Habits With Your Friends?
Today someone sent me a blog post that discusses how some e-commerce sites are automatically broadcasting information about your online behavior to the popular social networking site: Facebook: Facebook changes the norms for web purchasing and privacy.
The post cites the example of how Overstock.com automatically sends updates to your Facebook mini-feed when you purchase something from their site, and then all your friends get notified. The post tells how to go into your Facebook settings to turn this auto-broadcast feature off for Overstock.com, but it says that you can’t globally opt out from all future third party purchases.
The blogger, Ethan Zuckerman, captures his feelings nicely:
“For me, the overwhelming feeling was one of uneasiness - in my head, at least, this isn’t how the web works. When you’re doing business with a website, your interactions have consequences only on that site, not on a completely unrelated website, right? Of course, that’s not true”.
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Is Online Anonymity a Thing of the Past?
After spending the last week in Costa Rica I went online last night to post photos from my trip. I had been down in Central America for a friend’s wedding, and I knew 20 of my closest friends would also want to rehash the week in images. At first I went to push them onto Flickr, but then I wondered whether I wanted images of me vacationing all over the web. So instead I uploaded them to my Snapfish account, which allows me to send a link through email to specific people.
The whole thing made me wonder: Was I being overly private? Are average people putting their personal photos up for the whole world to see? Turns out, they are. After 2 minutes of searching Flickr for other Costa Rica vacationers, I found pics of:
- A group horseback riding to see waterfalls
- Friends soaring on a zip line through the rain forest
- A grandmother showing off her bruise
Have we as online users turned a corner in how we view online privacy? Has the increased sense of community online led to a new level of openness?
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Social Networks and Online Shopping Collide to Create “Social Shopping”
I work in e-commerce, and recently I’ve been fascinated to watch the industry scramble to react to a new phenomenon: the collision of social networks and online shopping, which has opened up a new frontier of social shopping. This post explores the past, present, and future of social shopping.
The Past: Online Shopping Develops Independently of Social Networks
In the last few years, companies have pioneered new ways of selling products that their physical counterparts haven’t done: they allowed customers to contribute to the dialog. They started by allowing customers to rate products (like 3 our of 5 stars), but then they opened it up even more by allowing customers to individually voice what they think about a particular product by writing personal review–both good and bad. Still, customers had to seek out the e-commerce store, navigate to a particular product page, and scroll down to discover what others thought. Continue Reading “Social Networks and Online Shopping Collide to Create “Social Shopping”"
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