Media Watch December 19, 2007

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

By PJH Staff

Google me
Ladies, I know you’ve been Googling me. But don’t worry; you’re not alone.
A recent study found that Americans are increasingly using Internet search engines to ‘Google’ (the dominant parlance, like Kleenex, or – in parts of the South –Coke) themselves, and many are using it to check out friends, co-workers, even romantic interests.

In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said about 47 percent of adult American Internet users have searched the Internet for information about themselves.

That is no tremendous surprise to me: A certain Planet JH staffer has boasted of Googling himself two and three times a day. 

Americans under 50 with more education and higher earnings were more likely to search for themselves on the Internet, while women were more likely than men to look up information or a photo of someone they were interested in romantically.
You probably should not, however, Google your ex-lovers, and looking up their new partners can be an educational, albeit ultimately fruitless endeavor.  

But be careful: even narrowing down a search by name and location can be misleading. There is even in this small community another Ben Cannon who I’ve been mistaken for. That charlatan.
– Ben Cannon

It’s for the needy! Wait, it’s for marketing…
This holiday season a local media group created a Christmas-themed website and video with the sole purpose of attaining your email address. It’s no wonder - email addresses are like crack cocaine to marketing types: they love them, they use them, they can’t get enough of them and they will do whatever it takes to get more of them. This site, however, brings the email-hoarding game to new lows. 

Go to www.SaveTheElves.org. Watch the video.  You will be baffled as to who came up with such a kitschy concept.

Here’s the deal: through this website Circumerro is raising money for the needy during the holiday season and if you sign your email in the box below, it says, “for every e-signature received Circumerro will donate one dollar (up to $1000) to Jackson Hole’s Children’s Learning Center’s ‘Adopt-A-Family’ program, supporting families in need this holiday season.” And beneath that the site tells you that although they won’t sell your e-mail address to a third party because that’s “just plain sleazy” you will “receive emails from us from time to time, when we have something important or fun to share with you.”

What’s “just plain sleazy” is abusing people’s holiday spirit and armchair philanthropy.  What’s “just plain sleazy” is using the “Adopt-A-Family” program to gain email addresses for marketing use.

How come Circumerro didn’t donate $1,000 to the Adopt-A-Family program on their own and then tell people about it on the website they already have?  If they did that people would want to give them their email addresses voluntarily because they would seem like a good company that cares about important causes. Right now, they just look like a bunch of drunken elves.  
- Sam Petri

Privacy is a thing of the past
Adult Americans, the same protagonists who are putting the porn industry out of business by cheerfully sharing porn like a sack of free kittens, the same folks who can’t imagine how their blood-splattered Virginia Tech costumes got from Facebook to the news and the very people who reportedly fritter away 2.09 hours of each 8-hour workday don’t care much about internet privacy, a new study reports.

In 1994, a Harris Interactive survey found that 65 percent of American adults said it was “extremely important” that internet activity not be monitored in the workplace. Fast forward to the week after 9/11 - only 40 percent agreed with that statement, a drop of nearly one-third. Now, a Pew Internet Project survey has found that just 28 percent of American adults believe it is “very important” that internet usage not be monitored in the workplace.

Perhaps Americans are unabashed when it comes to their surfing habits. “Hey,” they might think, “you can tell by my walking stick that I am a hardcore gamer, or by my fantastic sense of humor that I love LOLcats and I make them all day long using Microsoft Paint. Love me, love my sites.”

Or perhaps privacy has become a quaint cultural notion - a Rockwellian painting where the big boss cheerily claps you on the back and asks you to join him by the fire for a cuppa once you’ve finished erasing your search history. With an administration that toothily trills about the greatness of wiretapping and baldly requests greater and greater access to citizen’s personal lives, with Facebook informing your friends what you purchased online and with Google targeting you with advertising via keywords gleaned from your emails, the boss picking through your hard drive may now seem par for the course.
- Grace Hammond
PERMALINK:
Media Watch December 19, 2007 | Planet JH News Article: Media Watch

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