
Walmart buys a Facebook-based calendar app to get a look at customers' dates - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/03/wal-mart-buys-a-facebook-app-to-get-a-look-at-customers-calendars.ars
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reidmain
Remember, when you aren't paying for the product, you are the product.

Everyone using all the "free" social networks needs to understand this.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> "Remember, when you aren't paying for the product, you are the product."

This meme is getting boring and should die.

It's not true in many cases, from e.g. open-source (you don't pay, you gain)
to buying at Wal-Mart or Target (you pay, but they track and analyze you
anyway).

~~~
freshhawk
> "Look both ways before you cross the street"

This meme is getting boring and should die.

It's not true in many cases, from one-way streets (only need to look one way)
to blind corners (even looking you might not see the car)

* It's not a meme by any definition of the word, it's an aphorism. It's a damn good rule of thumb since the only actual example you could come up with where it doesn't apply is open-source. Even then, the context of this saying is clearly concerning commercial projects so it's not even a good example.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Actually, the only example it seems to apply to so far is Facebook; maybe also
some stuff Google does sometimes. Open-source is a meta-example, because if
we're comparing it with Facebook and Google+, I should probably list every
major open-source program that doesn't turn you into product, and compare by
the numbers. Many of those project even earn their authors money (AKA not
every business model for earning money on free products is based on selling
users).

And it is a meme because, well,
[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22you+are+...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=%22you+are+the+product%22&start=0).

~~~
reidmain
Facebook Google Foursquare Yelp Instagram Readability Twitter

And that is just off the top of my head.

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schwit
Reason 617 not to have a Facebook account.

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rhizome
So, the first thing that came to mind was Target's datawarehouse market
research work that got a lot of press a month ago. Some vocal people were up
in arms about privacy, instrusiveness, money, etc., but this here move by
Walmart should really put those peoples' minds at ease.

Here is a company with more money than god, yet they have to buy a company in
order to spy on their (potential) customers with any degree of ROI and/or
effectiveness, and only WRT date-based information. If you don't agree that
they're spying, I think you can at least allow that this is (what could be
known as) a sledgehammer approach to market-research.

~~~
lnguyen
If you have the money, you might as well buy a company that already has
product and data. Time _is_ money. As far as only date-based info, this is
data that they can't automatically get from within their system (aka matching
purchases with specific credit cards).

~~~
rhizome
Sure, but datawarehouse techniques have only just now reached a point in their
evolution where they are able to react to _pregnancy_ -related changes in
buying behavior, which is still probably going to return false positives. I
can't think of anything more significant in a human's life in affecting buying
habits than pregnancy, yet that's the cutting edge.

Getting data is easy, it's doing something profitable with it that remains
hard.

~~~
lnguyen
It's the same as any recommendation engine: Because you've bought _x_ , based
on similar patterns from other customers you're probably likely to buy _y_.
The fact that it's pregnancy-related makes for a good (and slightly
controversial) news article.

Throwing in the additional information that exists outside their system can
lead to even better and timely recommendations.

~~~
rhizome
My point is that deep-dive market research, let alone recommendation engines,
really aren't very good (yet). Recommendation engines themselves, as a shallow
version of what I'm talking about, haven't really progressed at all in the 10
or so years since Amazon et al figured out how to display the top three things
that other people bought along the thing you're looking at, which isn't rocket
science.

