Tag Archives: digital media

November 29, 2012 · 11:32 am

Until Someone Pokes Their Eye Out

With the holidays almost upon us, it’s getting to be the time when we all watch “A Christmas Story” for the umpteenth time.

A Christmas Story

A Christmas Story (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As a parent, one line that always sticks out is the “you’ll shoot your eye out” phrase since it echoes something I used to hear as a kid. That was more like “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye” but the meaning is similar.

There’s a business reason why I’m raising this as well. Many businesses routinely assign inexperienced staff to support their digital efforts. This happens particularly in the social space, where it’s easy to get caught up in the meme of the day. What’s a meme?  You know them – everything from LOLcats to “Mckayla Is Not Impressed” to “Binders Full Of Women.”  Some are short-lived, some endure.  Maybe it’s not that sort of activity but just someone trying to be proactive – there’s interest in something the company is doing, let’s foster it.  In either case, an employee trying to have the business engage with fans can do a great deal of damage, and it’s not just to a business’s reputation.

For example – let’s say your social admin decides to challenge your fans to a contest of some sort.  There are no written rules and one of the losers objects.  Lawsuit waiting to happen.  Let’s say another admin posts an image and encourages fans to do their own version.  Who vetted the theme (was it copyrighted someplace)?  Who approved the materials (do we have a license for the image as well as for any actors/others who are in the image)?  Or maybe you decided to use one of  the Cheezburger Network’s LOLcats sites to create a meme with an eye towards starting something viral. Did anyone make sure the materials you are using are free for commercial use or have been licensed for your specific purpose?

Any time we charge someone with speaking for our brand or our company we should hear the Mom in A Christmas Story.  You really can shoot out a lot more than your eye if you don’t understand the business and legal ramifications that are well beyond understanding the technology.  That’s when it stops being fun and games.  Any thoughts?

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November 28, 2012 · 11:01 am

Keeping It To Yourself

We have discussed privacy here on the screed several times. During many of those rants I talked about how companies need to think about their privacy policies (and being transparent about it is a great start) and how those policies will play with the folks whose data the companies are using. My theory is that young people have never really had any privacy (mostly due to hovering parents) and they’re less concerned about the issue than are people of my generation. However, there are netizens of every age who do care, and I suspect that as the “creepy” factor of ads following you around grows due to retargeting, etc., more people will begin to look into what data they’re sharing with the web overlords and how that data is used.

If you care or if you wonder if you should, the folks at Privacy Choice will be of interest to you.  Their research reveals that 20% of sites and apps reserve the right to share personal data freely for commercial purposes. Also, 60% of website privacy policies do not provide any written assurance that users can delete their personal data at the end of the relationship:

The most critical component of a privacy policy governs how a website or app handles personal data, which increasingly includes not only email addresses but also profile and other more intimate personal information gathered through social network integration…Nearly two-thirds of all policies examined (63%) provide assurance that personal data generally will not be shared with other companies, while another 10% promise not to share personal data for “marketing purposes.” However, one in five sites provide no assurance against sharing personal data with other companies.

If you are interested, I urge you to install their Privacyfix tool and the browser extension.  You can check a site’s tracking using this tool.  The results can be eye-opening.  It’s becoming obvious that companies are counting on us to take control if that’s what we want.  What do you think?

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November 19, 2012 · 12:03 pm

Too Many Cookies Make You Fat And Slow

“What the heck is he doing writing about food on a Monday?”

English: Plateful of Christmas Cookies

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Given that it’s Thanksgiving week here in the US I’ve got food on my mind more than I usually do.  However, while cookies is the theme, it’s not about the sugary kind.

I was reading a bunch of sports sites as part of a research project when I came to one that seemed to lock up my browser   As it turned out, this site (which shall remain nameless since singling them out doesn’t serve any purpose) hadn’t locked me up but it was taking forever to load.  I opened a new tab and hit another site which popped right open.  Returning to the slow-poke, I took a look at what the page was doing as it loaded.  Imagine my surprise when I had a look at all the external (meaning off the site’s own servers) scripts and cookies that were running.

While my browser had taken the site’s primary analytics cookie (hey, I’m in the business so I like to help others learn) as well as their main ad serving cookie and even their Twitter tracker, my browser had  blocked 66 third-party cookies.  Each of those took a call to a third-party server.  These were ad networks, retargeting firms, on site ads from third parties, behavioral targeting firms,  etc.  The page (and each subsequent page, as it turned out) took  a long time to load .  While it came right up the  browser won’t respond since dozens of scripts are running.  Maybe a great revenue experience for the site owner but for we lowly users, it sucked.

One solution to this issue might be Google Tag Manager or deferring the parsing of JavaScript but it really goes beyond that.  Years ago there was a real emphasis on light page weights (the amount of code on the page as well as all the images, etc) and fast load times.  With the advent of broadband, I can’t recall having that conversation with anyone lately and maybe that’s a bit of negligence.   In addition to the SEO benefit fast pages get, they’re better user experiences.  That’s a broader point no matter what business you’re in.  If the focus isn’t on making your product the best it can be for your consumers, you need to refocus.  While I get that for media the “consumer” is the person buying the eyeballs you’re aggregating, without a good experience to bring those eyeballs back again and again, you won’t be in business for very long.

In other words, lay off the cookies!  Thoughts?

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