We all love it when brands make us feel special, but how forgiving are we when they get it wrong?

The theory goes, the more in-tune with the potential customer’s frame of mind a product offering is, the higher the probability that the offering will result in a sale. It just makes common-sense; Give a thirsty man water; Give a hungry woman a snack.

Large strides have been already made in terms of personalization through customized content. Visit Amazon.com for example (my site is on page 24 of that book by the way). If you’ve been there before and sign in, Amazon welcomes you by name, and suggests items that it thinks you’d be interested in. In the case of a hotel, go to a hotel enough times and they’ll remember little details like the fact you enjoy an extra pillow, or what your favorite daily is and provide both of them for you before you enter your room. However, let’s look at this in a different way.

Are the potential gains of creating a positive, customized user-experience worth the risk of getting it wrong from time to time? Read more…

Critical eye, Marketing, User-Experience Customization, Privacy, UX

Sure they taste good, but are they good for you?

During my Web Analytics studies at UBC, an interesting topic arose that was the centre of some lively discussion:

Is the use of cookies to track online behaviour an invasion of privacy?

If you were watching the news lately, you’d think they probably were. Last week, the White House caught quite a bit of flack about using web beacons (a.k.a., web bugs) and persistent cookies on their website, http://www.whiteHouse.gov. Interestingly enough, the use of web beacons (in a nut shell, JavaScript that calls a tiny image while transmitting some data about a web site’s visitors) was not the problem. The problem was the existence of persistent cookies. I won’t go into detail about how the cookies got there, or if they were actually set by the White House website, but basically these little text files that are stored on your computer are quite controversial to some. I’ll just offer this:

Relax. What’s the big deal? Read more…

Critical eye, New Media, Rant Cookies, Privacy, Web Analytics

On the web, there are no "true" secrets. Everything is archived for all to see.

In 1999, almost 10 years ago, I began tinkering on the web. I built my very first website. It was all very tentative, with no long-term goals in mind. Not for a moment did I think about whether I wanted my site to be archived forever, but it was.

In July of that year, I also started experimenting with Linux and used newsgroups (remember those?) to get technical support. I got the information I needed but it didn’t occur to me that my questions would still be online almost a decade later.

Luckily for me, I only started being active on the web in the late ninetees when social networks were not mature, and uploading large videos was a pipe-dream. There was no LinkedIn, no Facebook, and definitely no Flickr. Despite this, I still managed to write a few embarrassing posts I’d love to take back. Read more…

General, Personal Brand Millennieals, Privacy, Social Networks