The Wall Street Journal's What They Know blog is charged with determining what information marketers are capable of learning about internet users through tracking technology. This weekend, they took aim at Facebook, after their investigation discovered that many popular apps on the social-networking site, including those by Zynga, have been transmitting identifying information in the form of User ID's to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, even if a user has enabled strict privacy settings. Additional analysis. Response post on Facebook's Developer Blog. Forbes' blogger Kashmir Hill asks if the WSJ is overreacting, and Techcrunch notes that the severity and risks of UID transferral are still being debated.
posted by zarq on Oct 18, 2010 - 56 comments

A US Senate Committee just released its report on online loyalty programs. Combined, Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue have made $1.4 billion in the past ten years charging customers $10-$20/month for marketing program memberships. Unfortunately, many of their customers (4 million this year) have no memory of authorizing the charges. [more inside]
posted by Nelson on Nov 18, 2009 - 26 comments

Trendwatching reports on "emerging consumer trends and related new business ideas." It is packed with ideas and links for new online business concepts that are currently emerging. The language is marketingpersonbuzzspeak, but the ideas (with supporting website examples) are fascinating.
posted by stbalbach on Sep 19, 2005 - 28 comments

A dot com (sort of) that's making money I'd love to post this link to f****dcompany.com but unfortunately these people claim to be profitable. So I have to wonder if some of those really stupid business ideas from the web boom weren't so so stupid after all.
posted by rdr on Apr 6, 2001 - 11 comments

Carl wrote a great Industry Standard article lampooning online marketing, and I couldn't help but laugh at seeing a "B to B Convention" banner ad running at the end of it (screenshot).
posted by mathowie on Jan 19, 2000 - 0 comments