The Behavioral Targeting debate continues. At the heart of the debate is the simple cookie. This is not new technology. However, this simple tracking, analytics technique has now elevated to sophisticated behavioral tracking networks. In the ultimate end game here, many would like to see the cookie crumble … others would just like you to exercise choice and clear your browser so they can clear their conscience.

Central to the debate is the balance between privacy & engagement – and the assumption that they are polar opposites. They’re not. We can have privacy AND engagement. I’ll blog more on this in the coming months.

Peter Whoriskey, Staff Writer from The Washington Post captures the ongoing debate sentiment in "FTC Wants to Know What Big Brother Knows About You."

More on the big three announcements … Facebook’s Connect, Google’s Friend Connect and MySpace’s Data Availability. In short, it is all about data control and extending their ‘social influence’ to other web sites to capture more and more data for the social graph … and no doubt to bolster the value of their underlying revenue streams.

Each of the services proposes keeping their member’s data on their servers – no shock there. Their version of ‘open’ is via the use of widgets, applications or iFrames – however, they all have the same strategy – extend the reach and control more data.

The early pitches from the big three (going back to Facebook's announcements in 2006) were based on the ‘Social Cloud’ and integration via simple REST APIs. The tune has changed now to integration via widgets, applications or iFrames under a “let-me-do/outsource-it-for-you” approach … we’ll just make it easy for you to inter-operate with our data using standards such as OpenID, OAuth, etc.

If you buy this approach, then you accept the fact that it is OK for Facebook, MySpace, Google, et. al. to control more of your data …

A business colleague sent me a link this week to an article in Baseline Magazine entitled “Multiple Online Personas: The Choice of a New Generation” by Chris Gonsalves. Good article – especially the introductory paragraph outlining the same individual with three separate personas.

Didn’t take the buzz machine over at Gartner long to coin a new term – Generation V. As reported by Gonsalves, “the new Generation V (the “V” is for “virtual” according to Gartner) is not defined by age, gender or geography. Instead, it is based on achievement, accomplishments and a growing preference for digital media when it comes to learning and sharing.”

Refer YouTube video clip below explaining Google Friend Connect BETA ... Does anyone notice any permsissions associated with sharing and connecting 'friend' data to the third party web site? Seems like you need to opt-in to join the guacamole recipe website - and you can send invites to friends ... but the permissions on adding friends and sharing friend data?

Food for thought ...

Facebook responded quickly to MySpace Data Availablity (partnering with Yahoo!, EBay and Twitter) ...

Refer link to Facebook Develepers, "Announcing Facebook Connect" by David Morin on Friday May 9th at 12:32pm.

Expect a lot of discussion around who has the most Dataportability compliant effort ... The battle lines will be drawn over data ownership, access and privacy ... Refer first article from David Recorden (Open Platforms Tech Lead at SixApart) entitled "MySpace's Data Availability is not Data Portability" over at O'Reilly Radar ...

Let the games begin.

Let me apologize in advance for this essay, rather than blog. I’ll also post more entries on this topic over the coming weeks …

I toyed with two different titles for this blog. I settled on Go Big or Go Home – the other, Dataportability.org’s Standards Mashup is equally appropriate.

Dataportability.org, led by Chris Saad, has a big vision - boil the ocean big, not Texas big. The first victory has been to get the major players on board – Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, Plaxo, SixApart, LinkedIn. The second is to garner support from the multiple tangential (and in some instances, competing) standards initiatives who can dogpile into this venn diagram intersect …

The “big three” however are announcing their own initiatives:

After two to three years now of nothing short of explosive growth, seems like Social Network users are feeling a little remorse …

• Prospective employers reviewing their Facebook and MySpace postings and photos

• Some Colleges when assessing applications also review Facebook and MySpace accounts

• Search engines discovering content that users “thought was private”

• Beacon (Facebook) disclosing online purchases – although Facebook has now made this feature opt-in

• Lack of awareness of the privacy settings

Great article in The Washington Post today by Staff Writer, Kim Hart … “The Rise of Alter Egos in Everybody’s Space – After Oversharing, Users Recast Their Online Personas”. As noted in the article, many users are resorting to deleting and/or ‘rebooting’ their profiles to clean the slate …

‘Buzz marketing’ is not a new concept. I recall working with a client around twenty years ago in the PR industry. The PR firm rented out a bar, hired some models / ‘beautiful people’, invited the ‘who’s who’ and the media … and then generated buzz about the new vodka being launched. Marketing 101, right?

The big difference between the vodka party twenty years ago and buzz marketing today is a dramatic change in media. The ability to reach, engage and mobilize large audiences at low cost has been super-charged. Additionally, broad participation via social media and user generated content have dramatically changed the engagement and marketing landscape.

Buzz marketing has now been renamed Word-of-Mouth Marketing and has it’s own association, WOMMA – you guessed it, the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association.

This is the ‘real world’ equivalent of a bouncer at the front of every retail store, restaurant, library or little league ball park … Fill out the paperwork, sign the waiver - oops, I mean agree to the Terms of Service - and you’re in.

We’ve become numb to ‘opt-in’ … largely due to the fact that we’ve learned no click, no participation. Over time our pavlovian numbness also extended to co-opt, not opt-in techniques … No click, no data (this field required), no participation.

In short, we have direct marketers to thank for the words opt-in and opt-out. However, once turbo-charged by the Internet, they take on a whole new meaning. The one word that is noticeably absent in the interaction conversation is co-opt …

Co-Opt … to take or assume for one's own use; appropriate

Well, if someone has opted-in, they’ve agreed to give us their data (this field required), correct? It says so in the Terms of Service.