Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Online Assignment 4&5_Mann



One word to describe this assignment is wow!  It is amazing the amount of information that Google and Facebook has on me.  For the Facebook part of the assignment I went on and downloaded the stuff they have on me and looked at it, and described me perfectly.  One thing that surprised me was that they had everything that I have ever said, and have done on Facebook.  This information is kind of scary as they are keeping records of all the activity you have done throughout your life on social media. They have every thing from pictures, and messages to what type of music I have listened to on Spotify.  It is just kind of creepy that they keep record off everything on every user. 
Google’s description of me from based on my searching and online activity fit me very well.  They had almost everything about me right; they had my age, my gender, my interests, and the language I speak was all right.  They also had my interests on there.  They had about 25-30 things I was interested in and every one of those things was something that I do like and enjoy doing or learning about more.  It is amazing that they can figure all this stuff out from just a few searches.  They then use this information to tailor ads, which will directly impact the user. 
Life in the digital society is something that is changing.  Back in the beginning of Google, I do not believe that Google would know who the person searching for things on the Internet is.  But now a days due to all the changing technology and advancements it is easier for them to do things like this.  It also makes it seem like there is no privacy in the digital age.  People want some privacy and this might offend them if there is none, as you can see that Google know everything about me. They then use this information and picture of a person to send specific ads at them.  As we learned in class this is called target advertising.  It can be effective for the marketers but is intrusive in peoples live.  As the reading on target it said that a dad got mad because target sent his daughter pregnancy advertisements.  He had not learned that his daughter was pregnant yet (Duhigg, 2012).  This shows that just based on what she bought target could target ads at certain people.  This is basically the same thing Google and Facebook are doing.  Because of this it will change me, and what I post and search on the Internet because I now know that Google and Facebook are looking over me and keeping track of this information. I can only imagine what other types of information that Google and other site will keep now and into the future.



References


Duhigg, C. (2012, February 16). How Companies Learn Your Secrets. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com


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