Foursquare is pitching that checkin data will be available as targeting markers to advertisers. If advertisers pay for this, they are paying for checkin information.
Take the "soccer moms" example. Foursquare can say "we have X soccer moms checking in." A third party says "Here's an ad we'd like you to serve to soccer moms." Foursquare does it and returns usage data -- how many soccer moms clicked, etc.
Not saying that's how they'd do it, just saying that it's possible, feasible, even easy to provide ad retargeting without any data visibility at all. It's a little early to cry foul, imo.
It's not some dirty secret companies make money off of ads (that's why we're in business.) It's a dirty secret to make money off of ads using customer data and not tell your customers about it.
Facebook has always wanted to collect as much personal information from its users as possible. This is a brilliant move to get this data the easiest way possible - they didn't even need create their own phone or even their own OS. Android users - especially teens - will eat this up and FB will instantly be able to gather all the info they want without the target demographic even thinking about the privacy implications.
Smart marketing move. LinkedIn just made 10 million people wonder, if they are in the top 5% of most viewed profiles, who exactly did view their profile? Curious to see how many users end up converting to Pro from this "spam".
For what it's worth, I've yet to actually hear one VC actually say that getting covered by TechCrunch was a make-or-break for investment.
I'm more curious to see what kind of ROI you got from all of this effort. This particular TC article didn't drive a ton of social engagement, and as someone else said, they pump out a TON of content everyday. In terms of helping acquire users and build awareness, did the article help at all?
Looks like on October 30th Google made a massive expansion to the Google Art Project - which launched earlier this year - and it went under the radar for the most part. Here's Google's official blog post about it:
Can't update my list fast enough, but other major services experiencing problems are Netflix and Pinterest. Lots of other (smaller) sites are starting to fail too.
Pulse just acknowledged in the comments they are actively scraping RSS feeds from publicly available content (in addition to partnerships with some publications) - which is usually a violation of copyright law.
If Pulse is in fact violating copyright law (not saying they are), how is it a violation when it's behind a password protected user account, but not when it's behind an app that requires authentication to access?
WSJ content for example was behind a pay wall. But the difference is really that before they were an "app" running as a browser. Now they are a Website republishing the content.
The user experience may be the same, but the difference is equivalent to the difference between cutting a picture out of a magazine an pasting it on your wall, and taking a picture out of a magazine, scanning, it and publishing it to your website.
GoDaddy essentially does this - but you have to give the human the PIN. Also, most banks do this as pointed out (fwiw, I bank with USAA and I have to call from a registered phone number and enter a pin before reaching a human.)
