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

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?

It has been said that no two people are alike, but if we generalize enough, we can segment audiences and markets. That’s what all of marketing intelligence is about after all. Web analysts extract behaviours and wants (and hopefully demands) from the volumes of visitor data and all the other internal records at their disposal to serve as the basis of customization systems whose purposes are to make customers feel welcomed and valued. But despite everyone’s best efforts, mistakes do happen.

Consider this, Walmart, a few years ago, “recommended a film about Martin Luther King Jr. to potential buyers of a “Planet of the Apes” DVD” (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10730202/). Damage control must of been in high gear that day and probably left a permanent bad taste in a few customers’ mouths. Whether or not Walmart actually lost customers over this incident is unclear. However one thing is for sure, there was bad press and it wouldn’t be far fetched to assume that even bigger hiccups than this could occur in the future.

Are there times when adapting content for users is dangerous?

Let’s put PR and hurt feelings aside for a moment. There are some cases where identifying personality-types and leveraging this knowledge could be potentially dangerous. For example, take users that can be categorized as substance-abusers or compulsive gamblers. Feeding into their tendencies, though profitable, could be detrimental to their well-beings. In fact, if adaptive systems advance even further, it might be necessary to set guidelines on how they are used to protect vulnerable consumers. And what if governments were to impose their influence on these adaptive systems? Could this be a tool for online propaganda or censorship? Could web logs incriminate users or make them political targets? To deal with these scenarios, it may be necessary for these systems to develop morals.

Customized user-experience: It’s the new black.

Despite any moral implications, customized user-experiences are here to stay, and in fact, they will become more prevalent in the years to come. Consider some other adaptive technologies in the pipeline:

• In 2003, IBM developed a way to customize the grocery shopping experience by helping shoppers know of specials in certain isles, etc via a small terminal attached to shopping carts. It’s only a matter of time until they work out all the angles on this one and introduce it to more grocery chains.
• MIT is working on websites that adapt. These adapting sites change their content and layout for unknown users in order to better suit their preferences. It is predicted that  this technology, when implemented on a site, could increase sales up to 20%. MIT plans to launch their first full version of this technology in the near future in Japan.

If you can’t fight ‘em, join ‘em.

It’s not about whether this will happen, it’s about when it will happen. The web industry has remain vigilant, constantly determine the new metrics, and have the strength of character to remain ethical despite the temptation of possible easy gains. Discussions at the early stage will help steer new technologies and prepare us for the future.

What do you think of customized user-experience? Should we embrace it, or discourage it?

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

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?

I feel there is this strange perception of what is private and what is not with respect to different mediums. Consider this: whenever you use your credit card, you are tracked by the store, and the credit card company. Banks especially, know if your credit card usage is out of your “norm” and will contact you. Yet, no one complains about that. Similarly, cell phones today have GPS functionality. Yet no one seems to raise a fuss about being located by the phone company. And those close circuit cameras around your offices? No worries. But when it comes to web surfing, it’s a whole different ball of wax.

For some, web usage must remain secret, and completely private. You’d think they were spies, deleting their caches and flushing their cookies after every surf-session. I think the public has to accept that anytime technology is in between you and the person you are trying to communicate with, there is a risk of information theft. Have you secured your WiFi connection? Chew on that for a bit.

Blocking cookies? Pointless.

There is a misconception that deleting or blocking cookies will make you disappear from web analysts’ and Big Brother’s radars. News Flash: You’re just fudging up the numbers. Outside of using public computers, where I totally condone deleting cookies since people might login as you if you’re not careful, I don’t see the point. With respect to Google Analytics (GA) alone, even if you were to block cookies, web analysts still have your IP, screen resolution, browser make, and a myriad of other stats. The cookie is just a small part of the equation.

The anatomy of the Google Analytics cookie system

Upon closer inspection of the GA cookies you’ll notice that the GA cookies actually don’t contain a great deal of information about you. Basically, they only contain:

• A unique number identifying your session
• A Google Analytics account number that identifies the web bug account
• A cookie that refreshes every 30 minutes with no real information in it
• One persistant cookie with no real information in it

By blocking these cookies, you successfully do the following:

• Increase the number of “Unique Visitors” reported
• Reduce the number of return visitors reported

That’s pretty much it really. (See for yourself with Stéphane Hamel‘s WASP application.)

NOTE. Yes, I know 3rd-party cookies are still borderline in terms of privacy. I’m talking about 1st-party cookies here. But thanks.

Most cookie usage is not evil

Another argument I hear is that some users don’t want customized content, or they don’t want to let marketers into their heads because they find marketers “evil”. Contrary to popular believe, marketing isn’t evil. At the heart of marketing (and most web analytics) is the attempt to discover a need or want within a market segment (or to find a new market segment completely) and satisfy them. That’s it. Marketers simply want to figure out what you want and give it to you (I know, crazy concept). If you don’t like what they’re offering, ignore them (which many of us already do), and market forces will do away with them eventually.

Other methods to maintain your privacy

So, deleting/rejecting cookies isn’t the holy grail of privacy. What is a privacy-nut to do then? Here are my tips for those who wish to drop off the map:

• Delete your: Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts as well as your blogs and personal websites. Get your personal information off of there – those are prime targets for identity theft, which is much more serious than your surfing history. Try doing a serach on Piple to see what I mean.
• Always use a web proxy you created to hide your IP. Don’t trust anyone else’s proxy but your own.
• Never use WiFi, especially don’t do online banking via wireless.
• Never use, Hotmail, or Gmail. In fact, don’t use mail at all.
• Don’t use a cell phone (iPhones included, dear lord, especially not iPhones)
• Don’t use satellite TV.
• Burn your garbage. Why hack cookies when I can simply pick out your bank statements from the trash?

Essentially, disconnect from the wired world altogether. Or…. accept the reality of the web, that ANY information you put into it is somewhat vulnerable (so be careful about what you publish) and know that cookies aren’t that big a threat, and are definitely the least of your worries.

What are your thoughts about cookies and privacy?

(Thanks to Jacqueline Ng, Stéphane Hamel, Adrian Liem and my classmates at UBC for the great conversation and feedback.)

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. What can I say other than I was young and needed to get things off my chest. I wanted to express myself and own something online. I wrote with reckless abandon, wearing my heart on my sleeve, and never thinking about what the web would or could be. Today, considering I work in the web, I’ve emerged relatively unscathed. There are no pictures of me vomiting, no posts threatening any governments, and no photos of my doing anything illegal. That fact has absolutely nothing to do with any foresight but everything to do with the fact I had no where to easily post things like Twitter.

Today is a completely different story.

Every day new social networks spring up. Along with them a multitude of opportunities to forever incriminate yourself or botch up job opportunities. As I enter a new phase of my life where I’m starting a family, I start to look at the state of the web, and I grow a little uneasy. Every time I join yet another social network, I bring along with me the stories of my co-workers and loved ones. My photos and writings about my friends, their families, and their children will forever be archived online on some box somewhere on the web and things will get hairier for millennials.

Millennials are the first generation to very possibly have their entire life documented online. Photos of their birth, their medical history, their Google searches, their favorite shows, their relationship statuses – everything. Their lives are open books. To make things more complicated, archiving is getting more advanced. The web snapshots are getting more refined. The data is more granular and more can be done with it.

What are the implications?

As my generation was brought up learning how to never talk to strangers on the phone, perhaps the children of today will have to be educated at an early age about the possible dangers of social networks (maybe they do this today – I simply don’t know). How will this affect the social networks of the future? Will the trend towards openness and sharing continue? or will there be a sharp downturn as the general public becomes more web-savvy?

Only time will tell. Until then, I’ll err on the side of safety, and think twice (or maybe three times) before I post photos of the office Christmas party.

What are your thoughts?

Update 1: December 29, 1008

During an exchange with Liz Strauss, she brought up an interesting point that millennials would not miss something, in this case privacy, that they never had. I had to give this some thought, and I have to say I disagree with this line of thinking.

The web is littered with design patterns that imply security and privacy. Lock icons, https protocols, logins and passwords all hint that the information contained within the experience has a private aspect to it. I’m quite certain if one were to ask a Millennial if it were OK to read their Gmail – he or she would object, something to the tune of, “no that’s private”. Facebook has privacy settings in order to hide aspects of one’s profile to certain users – once again, implying privacy exists to a certain extent. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure most millennials don’t truly appreciate how much information Google stores on their searches either.

So, perhaps, when it comes down to it, millennials know, deep down, that their online information is… vulnerable… I just doubt they have any idea of exactly how open, or how archived their information is – and even if they did know, should this be really be the case?