You have to ask yourself the question: who are these sites trying to attract? What age group or demographic is generally more viable to click on the ad and why? Personally, the way I search for a site or a product is through a direct search on a search engine. This, to me, gives me a lot more control over what I want to see and what I don’t. It also seems to me as if there’s no blatant bias on what shows to the user. The paid ads are marked and the purely relevant sites are shown based on calculated algorithms. I’ve started to notice that ads have no direct effect on me. In fact unless the ad is annoying and flashy, there’s a chance I won’t even notice ads on a site. Every time I notice one of those direct search templates or an ad sense styled ad I realize I’m being sold to and tune it out. I’ve noticed, however, the older the demographic, the lesser the distinction between paid links and relevant links. However that’s not to say that older people don’t know the difference between an ad and actual content, but that experiences justify how they use certain methods to find items. For instance, there have been many times I’ve miss-spelled a direct URL or given the wrong gTLD (.com, .org, .edu) and have landed on sites that use the direct-navigation template (generic stock photo and filled with ads). Of course, I knew what the site SHOULD have looked like, and I knew that this wasn’t the site. That time, I let it go as a weird instance of Internet Magic. However, as I started to see these types of sites more and more as I made mistakes in typing URLs or tried to visit a site I used to frequent that recently went down, I started to get frustrated. This made me tune out any such advertisement, due to my preconditioning.

However, on the flipside, if you were on the Internet to find a cheap camera for your daughter, went to the address bar and typed up the first thing that popped into your head (cheapcameras.com, for instance) you’d find a plethora of links leading directly to the purchase. More so, if you were happy with the product and there was something else you needed to buy, you wouldn’t think twice about using a similar template advertising a different product if it popped up. It’s this experience that attracts people to click through ads and finalize a purchase since it’s a thoughtless process. You don’t need to know brand names, direct websites, price points, vendors or anything else. All you need to know is that you want cameras cheap and that things on the Internet end with a “.com”. In a simpler time without search engines and glorified ads detailing various top tier e-commerce outlets (Overstock, eBay, and Amazon to name a few) this “direct search” way of getting to an e-commerce site was probably the best. However, people perceive advertisements differently with changing times. Therefore things need to change to make these types of sites effective through time.

The article mentioned a few ways in which direct search portals were changing to entice people to click through links. Ways including a few advanced imaging aspects, and games to keep users entertained. However, none of these ideas will work unless legitimate users stop getting frustrated whenever they hit this site. Direct searching companies need to find a way to get people to think that not all of the obscure sites are fluff. Optimally, they need to get people centralized using direct searching. However, to get you must give, excessively. For instance, Google seemingly got to their position through digital philanthropy. Giving users free services such as Gmail, Google analytics, Google docs got them good press. On the other side of the spectrum, most direct search sites are in it for the money. Therefore there tends to become a thick layer of questioning of “why should I use this site to get my product?” while using these types of sites (especially when you know exactly the product you need). What kind of philanthropy these companies need to persue is questionable. I think games are a good start, but there needs to be something more than that. These sites need to interact with the user and suit the user’s needs… rather than shoving products down their throat.

As time goes on I’m sure these sites won’t change very much in the future. However, as people stop using them (and stop paying to advertise on them), different tactics will be necessary to attract people.

On the other hand, though, there are many schools in communities where having a computer isn’t a priority that also don’t have many computers. As such this makes accessibility for the entire community scarce and learning almost impossible. This too is being remedied, however, through many foundations (including the Bill and Malinda Gates foundation). There are also those who aren’t at all accessible to technology (people in third world countries, etc.) and as such limit their dynamics in the world. A child in such a country that want to eventually travel around may find it difficult to cope with a society that has become dependent upon technology that he has never seen before. To bridge that societal gap MIT has started the One Laptop Per Child movement to get computers out in the world.

While I don’t think there is much of racial gap there is however a major gender gap (which is interesting because the first computer programmer was a woman by the name of Ada Lovelace). When you look into a computer class you’ll see a class mainly full of males. Why this is is unknown to me. The video states that women tend to have a disdain toward hard sciences, however there are many females in the scientific community. The best possible answer I have toward this phenomenon is that socially females try to stake priority upon their outlook. Stereotypically someone behind the computer is essentially a dork with nothing better to do. As such they tend to view it as a bane of society and downplay it as such. There needs to be a change in this paradigm.

Now while I think there really isn’t much of a digital divide involving computers today there is however a digital divide involving internet connectivity. The Digital Divide in Internet connectivity is not like whether or not you have access to a computer. Internet Access is in the hands of the provider. If the provider doesn’t deem your area profitable for them, they’ll pass upon the idea of giving your community their service. This is a problem since our society has been melding the internet with daily life. Tasks such as getting an e-mail (which is required for most applicants today) is not easy for those that don’t have access to an internet connection at home. And since our society has started to think of the internet as being synonymous with having a broadband connection those with a 56k line (while unfortunate) can’t do anything about it except wait (in more ways than one). Now since Verizon FiOS has started to gain steam many will probably see webpages giving you content that can be tough to handle with a broadband connection while many communities are inaccessible to such a high bandwidth line. To give an example of the lack of accessibility: my hometown was going to get FiOS last year. However since my town demanded that Verizon give a portion of their profits back to the community Verizon just decided it wasn’t worth it and left the city without a fiber optic connection. Having such a connection could have saved my family a lot since we were thinking of bringing the family hosting business home rather than using an office and paying a useless rent. One can only hope that the spirit of business (if one business can’t find profit in something another will) could remedy this Digital Divide. However, no one can be sure until it actually happens.

One article, “Facebook: Potential hotbed for ID theft“, gives you a look into the potential identity theft through social engineering on the social networking site Facebook. It reports of an identity theft group in Boston going by the name “Sophos”. Sophos created a fake user and named him Freddi Staur. Freddi went on to ask to befriend 200 random people on Facebook. Of those 200 people 87 said yes and 82 set their profile information available to friends, giving Freddi e-mail addresses, names, interests, and more. The article then informs that this could lead to very specifically targeted e-mail spam or viruses which could include people’s personal information. In the worst case sceneario a person’s entire identity can be stolen from guessing passwords from their interests. The most woring about it all is that it can be done with such ease. However, to counter these measures, facebook has set up information to what users can safely divulge and what they shouldn’t divulge at all.

Another article,  “Facebook dismisses privacy fears“, goes into depth of the recent fears of Facebook putting out user information through search engines and a search function put up on the site. Many have thought that information would be open to those who those who want to search for it regardless of their status as a friend or not. This created a torrent of outcry from people within the privacy community. Facebook dismissed these fears, however, by stating all that they would provide would be a user picture and a name. If the user wanted their info put up, they would have the option to do so. It seems that privacy is a huge issue now, however, for the site since it is gaining upwards to 40 million users from around the world. A catalyst for this growth has been it’s decision to release parts of it’s API to developers who create unique and interesting applications.  But as it userbase grows so does the need for monetary support. As such people might see ads that are specific to their user interests soon… This will cater to niche markets and interests.

My Opinion:

I feel identity theft is a huge problem with the internet today. There has been much done to deter it, however the biggest deterrence is user competence. Really people should be using common sense. Also, this issue doesn’t really border itself only to facebook… I’m surprised the articles didn’t mention other social networking sites…

While Google seems to look interested in helping you out, as a corporation its soul intent is to generate revenue. And also as a corporation, it has competitors. There are three main corporations in the web searching field: Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google (with ask.com in the fringes struggling to get in). While finding advertisements on Google used to be rare, recently it’s the total opposite. It seems recently Google’s search pages have been littered with ads based on search words. Not only are the ads providing money, but also the content itself has a possibility to create revenue. Every company has a distinct way of getting search results, but it seems that the Google PageRank technique isn’t based on the quality of the content on the site, but rather the amount of pages linking to it. Therefore the more popular the site, the better its “relevance” to your query is. This opens the floodgates for the question “If my site pays more, do I get more relevant?”. This also begs the question, why haven’t search engines helped out public sector sites? One may hypothesis that a non-commercial site has no possibility for generating revenue, therefore is left in the dust.

And while questionable relevance of our searches pose a big dent on our trust with Google there is one yet bigger compromise with using Google’s services… Privacy. Google’s policy on privacy not only keeps changing, it also provides more slack towards them, and imposes stricter limits on the end-user. For one their massive cookie can log user data for over 30 years. This can lead seemingly innocent searches into a massive portrait of who you really are. Also, since they have no retention policy, they can cache something you put up on the internet (no matter how questionable) and keep it in their records for as long as they like. You have to actually go out of your way to opt-out to deter Google from doing this. When and what Google will use this data for is uncertain. If you wouldn’t blindly put your trust in a total stranger, why should you blindly trust a stranger corporation?

Google also has had conflicts with copyrighting issues. The “Google book” service employs librarians and other facilities to scan in and archive all books… copyrighted or not. While other institutions have been archiving books, they make sure that they don’t archive books whose licensing is questionable or copyrighted. Google however prompts the the copyright holder to opt out of the procedure if they find their works undeserving to be under the service. Many copyright holders, in turn, find this offending of their works and have filed suit with Google. However, Google claims that this practice is fair use and does not have any impact on the definition of sales on books. This is in part to the fact that the USA has lenient copyright laws in comparison to other nations that allow the artists to collect payment for their works. Librarians find it interesting that technology is put into such a use, but don’t find it very relaxing that Google is trying to become an omnipotent repository for information.

My Opinion:

While some points are discerning, there are some things that are just biased hogwash. Points of interest, however, is that people have their privacy at stake. This opened my eyes on how blindly I have put my trust into Google’s services, but now I’m becoming more aware of my presence, and much more careful of my actions. Feeling restricted, however, is really the crux of privacy. Once you’ve been limited to your freedoms, it seems like you’re playing by someone else’s game, not your own. Upon the argument of revenue, a company is a company and money has to come from somewhere. To devote skepticism directly toward their practice of gaining money seems to be a bit unnecessary. It seems as soon as a company grows it gains bad publicity around it. On the issue of copyright, however, I feel that while their argument on fair use holds some ground, it should rather be an opt in process, rather than an opt-out process for copyright holders.

Sources:

http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

http://www.opendemocracy.net/media-copyrightlaw/google_3130.jsp

The important question is, however, if corporations are given the power to become the gateway to content would they abuse that power and throttle certain websites that tend to hog bandwidth while keeping competitor websites running normal and/or faster? The bill that was proposed states that this cannot be a case. The bill states if there is a line provided for a certain service, that line should be unanimously provided to all sites and provided without extra cost to client and business.

There are those, however, who believe that such a bill will eventually slow down evolution of Internet technologies. They argue that it would be illegal for corporations to create new advances in the field of the Internet. Advances on Internet security and advances on speed and such would be either capped in speed of development or never arise at all. They also argue that consumers who take up more bandwidth should be appropriately billed and those who don’t take up as much should not pay for those who do.

However the bill comes out of the reasoning that those who have the ability to spend more are able to spend more time on the Internet than those who don’t. This creates an unequal balance between the rich and the poor essentially throwing off neutrality on the Internet.

The bill tends to lean well with democrats (who tend to agree with the people point of view) while republicans don’t like it too much (since they lean towards the big business perspective). However the bill has a glimmer of hope this year with a stronger number of democratic senators incoming this year.

My Oppinion 

I don’t agree with the fact that businesses want to become these omnipotent guardians of Internet. While it’s not set in stone if they WOULD throttle bandwidth to certain sites who “pay the bills”, the possibility is overbearing. And once the power is granted, it’s a lot harder to take away. The fact that they would even ask concerns me a bit. Also there should be a pay as you go plan for those who think they take on less bandwidth than others. Those who OPT to set a limit on themselves would get a reduced price. While those who don’t will keep the fixed rate model set now. If net neutrality is compromised I can foresee a death in Internet usage. Eventual technologies of how to communicate ideas will emerge and take over. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again (and again, and again, and again).