BREAKING: Britney In Hospital, May Lose Kid Visits

Oh snap.

US Weekly magazine, citing a hospital source, says Brit has been "designated a 'special needs' patient" and was under "constant watch" (suicide watch? - R). Another US Weekly source says that in the ambulance, Spears had to be restrained like a mental patient and that she "was going between laughing and hysterics."
Uh-oh.

I miss the old Brit:

Reuters

A Matter of Trust: Sears & Kmart and Neil Diamond

Scary news for corporations who are interested in building online communities to further engage consumers (Disclosure: I'm involved in creating online communities for corporations interested in further engaging consumers -- but nothing nefarious like this). A Harvard researcher has uncovered a piece of "marketing software" sourced from Sears and Kmart and discovered that it contains invasive (and illegal, according to Boingboing) spyware.

Remember awhile back when Sony embedded spyware into its CDs, crashing computers all over and further hurting its sagging in-store (as opposed to iTunes) sales? I personally took it as an affront because of what it did to Neil Diamond. Let me digress for a moment...

Neil was working with master producer Rick Rubin on a 'comeback album', 12 Songs. Rick had just come off of his work with Johnny Cash and other aging legends, so I was looking forward to their efforts. Neil, as per Rick's direction, was to play a good deal of the instruments on the record, which he hadn't done in 30 years or so (totally a guesstimate -- might bother looking it up later to update). Anyway, long story short, the album came out, the spyware was on it (along with a number of other releases), and Sony ended up having to get returns on a crapload of CDs. Sales of the Neil Diamond album spiked upon release, but after the spyware incident, took a nosedive. Pissed me off... Neil and I have similar roots.

Anyway, Sears and Kmart (both owned by Sears, btw) didn't learn Sony's lesson.

Topline:

• Fall 2007, Sears.com and Kmart.com began asking users if they wanted to participate in an "online community" (I assume a social network made up of Sears and Kmart loyalists).
• In late December, a security researcher discovered that the "community" installed software from a market research firm, to track the web activities of the sites' visitors.
• It also tracked visits to bank sites, looked at email, and other invasive things.
  
• All this information was sent to the market research firm.

Oops.

I harbor a strange romanticism for the lost American companies of my youth and prior, like Woolworth's, The Automat, and Gimbel's. Because of this, I used to feel sort of sorry for companies like Sears and Kmart, who've gotten crushed in recent years by Target and Wal-Mart and Best Buy (Disclosure: Best Buy is a client). Not anymore.

When will companies understand that full transparency/disclosure is needed when working with word of mouth campaigns, social networking and any other relationship-building initiatives? Evangelists are willing to, or even excited to work with their favorite retailers to improve their experience. When they're misled, consumers lose trust in a company, and move somewhere better. Lately, most other retailers have been better, online and otherwise. These guys just really really hurt the feelings of people who cared enough about them to stick around and shop, and join up what's essentially a fan club. They're not going to stick around any longer.

The Washington Post

via BoingBoing

Who's Watching You?

Scoble mentioned on his blog today a term that I've never heard before, but have referred to often in usually inelegant terms: Granual Privacy Controls.

Whereas I realize the story that the term came up in is what he's discussing (Google Reader privacy), I started thinking more about the big-picture implications of privacy in regards to the term.

I've started a somewhat successful Facebook community at my company. One of the strongest privacy features that Facebook offers in this case is its options concerning who can view what particular content on your profile. While some people (not including myself) like to post pics of themselves in bikinis or doing keg stands, they don't want their Managing Director to see them. Don't get me wrong -- I really support the posting of bikini and keg stand shots, and enjoy them immensely, so y'all keep posting them. But I digress...

ANYWAY, people really do like to keep tabs on what others are doing -- the Facebook Newsfeed is a good example. I can actually track friends' movements, moods, etc., and it's fun and engaging. That said, some folks don't want people to know, and Facebook gives them the option of doing as such. As people get more involved in online communities, social networking services that don’t have Granular Privacy Controls will increasingly piss off users and chase them away.

It makes you think a bit about where all your 'assumed privacy' falls. For instance, I tend to ignore Google ads and banner ads... It's just a thing of mine (which is baaad, because sometimes I'm involved in producing them). I'm a big fan of Gmail, and in general, I ignore the ads on the page which allow me to use Gmail for free. But do people realize that the (possibly very personal) email that was sent to me (and I replied to) has been scanned by a service that picks up keywords in the content and then provides marketing information to show me things that "I may be interested in", based on that (personal?) content? Most people don't think about that.

Scobleizer