Confessions of an Online Skeptic
Trend Predictions
03.05.2009
In:
Social Media
I'm starting to see (and yes, I may be the last) that we've only scratched the surface of social capability in the online world. As we speak, the companies that own the future - Google, Yahoo!, Facebook - are implementing applications that make the Internet more mine and yours than ever, allowing us to take our friends with us wherever we go. These tools, such as the already-launched Facebook Connect, do so by enabling us to log on to any third-party website, using one universal identification. No more long lists of different user names and passwords; now we can journey from site to site with just one login. And as we move around the Web under this one ID, our friends, our history and our data follow. When we log into a site via Facebook Connect, for instance, we can see which of our friends have also visited and what they've done there, and we can broadcast our own activity back to our home base on Facebook.
In essence, we can walk into any online party and instantly know someone! For us Web wallflowers, that's incredibly comforting. We and our clans can form our own private water coolers around pop culture stories, share and compare running routes or recommend downtown hotspots for one another, all with the greatest of ease. While yes, you could do all that without the Internet, would you? Or is the Web actually showing us how to be more social with each other than ever before?
There's a catch, of course. By carrying our personal information around with us from site to site, we make ourselves targets for personalized advertisements. As an ad woman, I feel pressure to be thrilled by this concept. We can talk directly to our customers in ways they've never been talked to before. However, as a ‘net user, I am admittedly skeptical. How much do I want brands to know about me? It's taken me long enough to accept the idea of sharing my info online with friends, let alone brands.
I'll accept that personalized ads may be the wave of the future.
But what will they do to win me over?
