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Loading ...A couple of brothers by the name of Maisols have developed a free online phone service similar to Skype which has been dubbed “pudding”. Well let me clarify “free” online phone service. Each customer’s conversations will be monitored and interesting tidbits of adverstising will appear on the screen during the exchange that relate to the conversation. Let’s say I’m chatting with my friend about movies I’ve recently seen, then advertisements for movies would begin to pop up. Leave it to a couple of brothers who “spent several years doing intelligence work for the Israeli military” (New York Times) to develop a product that boarder lines on a complete disregard for privacy.
The company has taken some measures to ensure that their client’s privacy remains relatively protected. Advertisements will only appear that have to do with the current conversation. Conversations will not be recorded or logged in anyway and just in case you are a potty mouthed teenager using your mom’s computer, expletives and other keywords will be left out. I guess that is best since you never know who might be checking out your on screen ads while you are conversing with your best friend or your significant other.
Pudding Media stands by this new advertising technology as not being radically different from other techniques currently in use today. Pudding compares it to similar targeting by Google and other e-mail providers that scan the in-boxes of their users to tailor fit the ads they provide to them. Personally I feel that this is an invasion of privacy and make a point never to click on the ads that were obviously generated in this way. However, I accept this from my e-mail provider and continue to use its services because they are convenient and more importantly, free.
If I dare speak for my generation and perhaps even those that were born after me, I would point out that this kind of casual acceptance of loss of privacy is part of our everyday internet life. We’ve given up on complete privacy to allow for what seems like personalized attention and in many cases simply out of convenience.
I don’t think Pudding is gearing this service toward forty something businessmen conducting super secret business transactions over the phone. For those who choose to use the service, which has been aimed at a younger audience, the ads may work as a conversation booster as opposed to an annoyance. I can just picture an awkward young teen trying to chat up their crush and being inspired to talk about the latest Justin Timberlake CD because and ad for it just popped up on the screen. This is ingenious. Even if the Pudding user doesn’t click on the ad they’ve already spread the information to another party. They have unwittingly become advertisers. This is where I see the deepest moral problem. Pudding is proud of the advertisements ability to control the conversation but I see this as an invasion not only of the users privacy but of their voice. I guess the upside of this is that the person using the service knows what they are getting into when they pick up the virtual receiver.
In the future Pudding hopes to be able to send out e mails to people on the other end of the line or even enable the function on cellphones. The cell phone users would be offered free calling in exchange for advertisements (a similar service is already being used by the British cellphone service provider Blyk).
What do you think, completely wrong or just a little fun? (I think fun is what they were going for based on their choice of names.)
Filed under: Skype, Telecom, VOIP, Web Applications, Web Services
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