MySpacers Beware

In today’s New York Times an interesting article graced the front page of the Business Day section. It seems that MySpace (more specifically Fox Interactive Media who owns the social network) is looking to boost revenues by tailoring its advertisements to particular users. As of now the “monetization technology group” at Fox Interactive Media has developed a program that scans for certain keywords/interests/likes in a users profile and targets the ads they will see directly to them.

This does not seem inherently wrong to me. Good for them trying to boost monthly revenue up to $70 million from the $40 million a month MySpace is currently generating. As far as I see there is not much difference in this and the way Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft chart my daily internet traipses to try to figure out what ad to bombard me with next. I sometimes even appreciate an occasional hot tip on a new travel agency or what not (by sometimes I really mean almost never).

The problem with this new MySpace venture is that users are for the most part unaware of the tactics being used to target them for a certain advertisement. (Did I know what cookies were when they first started being used against me? Only that they were delicious.) In this world of consumerism though, I think even the tweens using MySpace to connect with other tweens around the nation can smell something fishy when after mentioning Brad Pitt three times they start seeing a lot more ads for his next movie. So hell, in that case, go get ‘em MySpace… buyer beware and what not.

However, I do have to stand on the side of the privacy advocates on one point. Arnie Gullov-Singh speaking on behalf of MySpace said, “We want them [advertisers] to leave knowing more about their audience then when they came into the door”(NYT and yes I see the typo they left in, it should read than not then). I understand that MySpace could really use advertisers’ attention what with Facebook becoming so hip these days – and experimenting with similar advertising services, but this is where I see a problem. Users of MySpace are already going to be attacked by these oh-so-enticing advertisements geared directly towards them and in addition to this MySpace is going to help the advertisers know MORE about their target audience. Social network users would surely not like to know that not only are they being monitored but that their “private” information is being sent out to corporations for the purpose of being able to sell them more things. I place “private” in quotation marks here since clearly everyone who is using a social network must be aware at this point that not only people they want to see their profiles are able to access them.

I guess in some ways it can’t be helped. A service that provides some good or entertainment will eventually be used to sell you something. Those price saving cards at the grocery stores sell your information to all kinds of interested corporations. When you pop on your favorite TV show “the man” has made sure he knows who will most likely be watching before deciding what ads to air.

There does seem to be some upside to this in that eventually MySpace is hoping to open up the service to smaller organizations, groups, corporations looking to draw audiences/clients with specific interests and or locations. I guess they won me over using the idea of a Seattle punk band that would be able to look for an audience for their upcoming show through this service. I have a soft spot for punk bands that lack audience members. (A nice idea, but I have a feeling like the big guns will be using this service for much more profit and for much longer than the little guns.)

You tell me. – Is it fair that MySpace accumulate information about its users and systematically sell it for profit? Is that a fair question since it seems almost everyone is doing this already?