Friday, April 4, 2008

Phorm

Phorm (formerly 121 media) has been in the news a lot recently.


1) Got caught running a secret program to track the browsing habits of 18,000 customers in 2006.


2) Unveiled a new advertising model: Mr. X googles “job,” Phorm picks up on this, and then Mr. X gets Weight Watcher ads in spaces that Phorm has bought in popular websites. [this, I think, is basically what they were doing in 1) but now they’re taking extra privacy precautions]


This improves upon the most popular model today, where A Weight Watcher’s ad is on CNN.com, even though Mr. X doesn’t goes to BBC.com, instead.


The top 3 british isps have already signed up – account for 70% of broadband users in UK

[* the British have an enlightened attitude towards the security/privacy gradient http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6108496.stm]


Sources:

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080331006465&newsLang=en

Then an article from The Register


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