Your Friend's Privacy (Article Review #7)

Article Title:
When Sites Drag the Unwitting Across the Web

Article Author:
Somini Sengupta

Article Publication Date:
November 13, 2011

URL:
When Sites Drag the Unwitting Across the Web

Article Summary:
Klout is a site that tracks your influence on the web using algorithms to monitors you usage and assigns a score.  The problem being that Klout tracked the activity of your friends and family ,even minors, and created profiles.  After an uproar many of the tracking features have been removed and you can now also deactivate yourself.

Relevance to Class:
Joe Fernandez managed to build a site that tracks your activity on other sites and gauges your influence.  Web architectures connected all 3 aspects, content, context, and the user and benchmarked this information into a very useful tool for marketers.

Key Quote:
Klout, like a host of other influence yardsticks in the digital marketplace, like PeerIndex and Kred, is used by marketers to reach habitual comment makers who are likely to promote their products on social networks. It can be used by employers, teachers, homecoming queen committees — anyone — to gauge someone’s popularity.