Response to Erik Bergstrom

"StumbleUpon, although almost random, is better than search engines. It shows pages that wouldn't normally come up in a search, at least not in the first page. Mastering the ability to use Stumble Upon is a very valuable tool for Marketers. Check it out. Do you agree?"

I too recently 'stumbled upon' this webpage. I agree with Erik, that it is a very good marketing tool for websites that are new and trying to become popular. You can filter the type of information you are interested in coming across and can choose to 'thumbs up' or 'thumbs down' a site when they feed it to you. I think this is good for people who are only looking for certain types of websites to read. When you 'thumbs down' a site, it remembers that and doesn't show you any similar ones since you weren't particularly fond of it. I don't however think that this site is better than a search engine per say, because people typically use search engines when they need a particular website. StumbleUpon doesn't allow you to search for things, it more or less randomly chooses websites for you. I think StumbleUpon is more for someone who has the time to go through the websites that it randomly gives you. Check it out! i have found some very interesting and fun things while "stumbling."

Pandora Radio: Safe or Unsafe?

Pandora Radio is a popular and widely used application used on smartphones and internet browsers across America. This radio services allows users to search by artist, song or genre and it will coordinate a set of tracks similar to your search. How safe is Pandora radio, however, with our information? A recent article from the NY Times states (view article):

"The online radio service Pandora has received a subpoena from a federal grand jury investigating whether popular smartphone applications share information about their users with advertisers and other third parties."

What exactly does this mean, you ask? Pandora uses our information and delivers it to other companies to track how we interact with the service for advertising purposes. This type of issue seems to be coming up in other sites that we use frequently. The FTC is proposing a "DO NOT TRACK" tool so users will not have their information shared. I think this goes to show how unsafe the internet really is. One minute, a new innovative product or service is being discovered and the next, information is being passed back and forth that hasn't been agreed upon.

What is your opinion? Is this sharing of personal information going too far? Or, is it okay for companies to do without our consent?