On Internet Privacy, Fend for Yourself

The Washington Post ran a story today about the FTC's review of behavioral targeting by Internet advertisers. I have followed the regulation of Internet advertising for ten years, and I believe the privacy issue is much more interesting to privacy advocates and journalists than to the average Internet user. It's not that the issue needs more publicity; thousands of articles have been written, speeches made, press conferences held, and lawsuits filed, not to mention billions of banners ads run by well-intended marketers themselves. And still, most people have little interest in the issue, and those who do care about it protect themselves with cookie-deleting or ad-blocking tools that are inexpensive and readily available. The FTC has repeatedly told Congress that it already has all the regulation it needs to protect Internet users, because deceptive practices are already illegal, and almost any egregious intrusion on your privacy can be connected to a deceptive practice.

With my good understanding of the landscape, I recommend to friends that they familiarize themselves with the information that marketers collect, and when it crosses outside their personal comfort zone, take action, which often is as simple as opting-out or adjusting browser tools. Do not rely on the government law or regulation to protect you; the landscape shifts too quickly for that ever to be effective.

For instance, when AOL released supposedly anonymous search histories to academics and journalists a few years ago, the New York Times was able to track down one of the users within hours. Someone noted that, for a heavy Internet user, your search history is essentially a record of every thought you've had for the past several years. For some people, such a history is a benefit, because they can retrieve old searches and perform them again. To others, it's creepy. And fortunately for those in the latter group, most search engines make it easy to opt-out of their collecting your search history. And some Internet Service Providers are working with marketers to track every single Web site you ever visit, and then create a targeting profile. They provide assurances that the profiles are anonymous, and carefully secured. Many people actually prefer that any ads they receive be targeted to their interests. As long as these ISPs adequately disclose their practices and enable users to opt-out (which they can do by switching ISPs, for starters), there is no need for the government to do anything more, other than to ensure there is adequate competition in the marketplace.

How do you familiarize yourself with Internet marketing practices ? FindingDulcinea's Web Guide to Internet Marketing and Privacy is a narrated guide to the best resources for understanding both off-line and online marketing practices, and how to take steps to opt-out of practices you personally are uncomfortable with.

Kentucky Derby - the Day After

With the Derby favorite prevailing, the "wise guys" who usually try to beat the favorite nurse their wounds. They were relying to much on history. Yes, no horse had won from the 20 post since 1929, but there had been only 11 Derbies with 20 horses in that time, and plenty of horses had won from far outside posts. To be sure, Big Brown had much to overcome with the post and his lack of experience, but as I wrote yesterday, while he had to "be far, far better than anyone else in the race to even be in the picture.... he just may be that much better than this mediocre field." And the field proved to be mediocre, and Big Brown far, far better. I did bet him on top in a lot of triple keys.

Unfortunately, while my top pick, Denis of Cork ran third at 27 to 1, I did not bet the filly, Eight Belles, at all. Sometimes a horse is so improbable that I would not bet on him or her even if they ran the race again in three weeks; but Eight Belles is one that, in hindsight, I should have had, due to her consistency in a field comprised largely of inconsistent, and mediocre, horses. Tragically, there will be no next time for Eight Belles, as she had to be euthanized after breaking two front ankles. NBC used bad news judgment in its coverage; it was clear to any experienced observer, of which NBC had many working the broadcast, that the horse had been euthanized immediately, and yet NBC pressed the reluctant Dr. Bramlage to explicitly say so on the air.

As with all Derbies, the large field caused some serious traffic problems. One horse I liked, Visionaire, appears to have gotten a particularly difficult trip, and I'll be giving him another chance if he makes it to the Preakness of Belmont. Big Brown certainly seems like a formidable Triple Crown candidate based on his emphatic win, but there's a reason no Derby winner has gone on to win the the next two in the past 30 years. Maintaining his form without a deep "base" of prior experience will be quite a challenge. And while it doesn't appear that any of the vanquished foes from yesterday are likely to turn the tables any time soon, there's always a few "dark horses" who show up to provide a fresh challenge. When Barbaro tragically broke down the Preakness two years ago, it obscured the fact that the winner, Bernardini, was a fresh horse who ran a remarkable race and might have won even if Barbaro ran his best race. One intriguing possibility this year is Casino Drive, a half brother to the past two Belmont Stakes winners, who plans to come from Japan for the Belmont.

Oh Danny Joy

Shaun Clancy, keeper of Foley's Pub in New York City, banned "Danny Boy" from his establishment for the next few weeks. Clancy says the song, immensely popular with Irish Americans, shouldn't be played on St. Patrick's Day because it is a depressing tale of longing and loss. I loved this story because after years of mindlessly listening to this funeral dirge on a day of celebration, Clancy lowered the boom. Imagining yet one more St. Patrick's Day of customers singing mornfully "And if you come, When all the flowers are dying, And I am dead, as dead I well may be," Clancy pre-emptively shouted "cut, cut, stop the madness, give me Star of the County Down."

Now that I've got your Irish up, why do we celebrate St. Patrick's Day at all ? Something about snakes, right ? Well there's more to it than that. St. Patrick was born in Britain in 391 AD. At the age of 16, he was kidnapped and enslaved by raiders and taken to Ireland, where he herded sheep for 6 years. Isolated from the world, he turned to daily prayer for sustenance. He eventually escaped and returned to England, where he studied religion for 15 years. He then came back to Ireland and accelerated the introduction of Christianity. A practical man, he incorporated the sun, which Irish pagans worshipped, into a Christian cross, creating what is still known today as the Celtic Cross. And why on March 17 ? Well, you see, that's the Feast Day for St. Patrick, believed to be the date of his death in 460 AD. Tired of corn beef and cabbage ? I have a recipe for Ballymaloe Irish Stew. Had enough of NYC's St. Patrick's Day parade ? Boston and Dublin are obvious alternatives, but two of the best celebrations are in Savannah, Georgia and Butte, Montana.

Am I a Hibernophile who Googled the whole day to find all this information ? No, I spent about 8 minutes on the Web Guide to St. Patrick's Day. Drop in for a visit and before you know it, you'll be the one railing against incongruent "traditions" and shouting "cut, cut, ..." at a St. Patrick's Day celebration of your own.

Almost Perfect Feedback

To start a company is to climb aboard an emotional rollercoaster. I left the office on Monday on a real high; we had spent much of the day discussing development plans, and I was exceedingly optimistic about all of them. As I rode the elevator down with a colleague, I said "today was so great that tomorrow is certain to be a downer." And it was, as we focused on all the hard work in front of us to make these plans a reality. Because of my prior experience, I've been able to adopt the Stockdale Paradox (see my earlier blog post) of confronting reality while never losing faith that we will ultimately be successful, in large part because I've assembled a truly remarkable team of talented and passionate people, and passionate people are unstoppable. And yet its still quite rewarding to receive third-party appreciation to affirm our efforts. A week ago, we published AlmostPerfectSeason.com, an anthology of media coverage of the NY Giants' remarkable 2007 season. To read how the media elite emphatically wrote off the team, its defense, quarterback and head coach as hopelessly mediocre, and then celebrating the dramatic Super Bowl win is a terrific tale of redemption.

On Monday, Sports Illustrated named AlmostPerfectSeason a "hot click," and wrote "Here's one of the more amazing sites we've seen in a while." The glowing reviews have poured in steadily since:

"A great website called Almost Perfect Season serves as a time capsule of the incredible 2007-08 Giants campaign..... It is really interesting to look back at many of these articles and how down on the Giants many were early on. "

"stumbled across this amazingly comprehensive synopsis"

"This is an amazing read. If you have the time you can get lost in it for hours."

"Ah, absolutely loved it."

All of these pats on the back don't change the reality that we have a lot of hard work in front of us to make FindingDulcinea the next great Internet brand. But they do strenghten our conviction that we will ultimately triumph.

Plenty of Room at the Inn

Since the commercial Internet began to seriously take shape in the mid-1990s, pundits have been eager to declare “game over,” anoint the “winners,” and deem all subsequently launched ventures to be “too late to the party.” An August 1997 article in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that Microsoft and CNET were joining “an increasingly crowded field now dominated by Yahoo Inc., Excite Inc., InfoSeek Corp. and Lycos Inc. The new sites will also face off against a host of other search services, including Alta Vista, HotBot, WebCrawler, Inktomi, Open Text, Deja News and Magellan.” Star stock analyst Keith Benjamin is quoted saying "There's a prize for first place. There's also a prize for second place, though I don't know how big the disparity is between the prize for first and the prize for second. I don't think there's a prize for third." More than a decade later, Benjamin’s observation proved true, as the largest search engine dominates the space, and the horse running in third is desperate to combine with the one in second. But no one predicted at the time that the search leader a decade later would be Google, a company that at the time existed only in the brainwaves of a pair of college students.

It can be difficult to look at a start-up and predict its ultimate success against apparently entrenched competition. I’ll admit to discouraging a friend from buying stock in AOL in 1995, because I believed it could never overcome Prodigy’s headstart and superior backing from IBM and Sears. And I have on my bookshelf “The 100 Best Internet Stocks to Own for the Long Run,” published in 2000. Based on a quick glance, I estimate that half of them are out of business or a mere shell. And of course the fall of giants is not just an Internet phenomenon, as IBM and AT&T attest.

And yet despite the brief history of the Internet, in which “entrenched” leaders can disappear quickly and new companies can rise meteorically, most start-ups are still greeted with “you’re late to the party.” The New York Times reported today on “Women of the Web,” a venture backed by a cadre of elite women from the book publishing, journalism, advertising, television and acting professions. The CEO, Joni Evans, was a star agent and chief executive for William Morris, Simon & Schuster and Random House, and thus apparently understands what people want to read. She believes that women over 40 (and with a modicum of intelligence) are tired of being talked down to on the Internet. So she’s putting together a series of “conversations” on issues germane to these women’s lives. Readers will enjoy informal and intimate musings of gossip columnist and TV personality Liz Smith, advertising guru Mary Wells, noted author Peggy Noonan, 60 Minutes’ Leslie Stahl, as well as stars such as Lily Tomlin, Marlo Thomas and Candace Bergen. Each of these women has staying power; they have all been in the public eye for 20-40 years. The site will develop a significant, and more importantly, affluential and influential audience, eager for the opportunity to read intelligent fare and interact with these icons.

Pundits, including the Times' writer, question whether users will use it in lieu of iVillage, More and other leading women’s interest Web sites (and it is worth noting that the Times ran this piece in its "Fashion and Style" section rather than "Business"). But this site’s audience is not visiting iVillage and indeed is not heavily using the Web at all right now. A core belief behind FindingDulcinea is that a large swath of Internet users significantly under utilizes the Internet because of how difficult it is to find quality, credible content. WomenontheWeb will build this, and people will come. As writer Joan Buck told the Times, “iVillage has always puzzled me …. I love the idea but it’s like Macy’s or something.”

The one thing I’d change is the domain name (yea, I know, glass houses. We went out on a limb with “FindingDulcinea,” and 18 months later I’m still convinced it’s a long-term winner). The Times article discusses the lengthy debate the founders had over the name. Liz Smith’s suggestion of “HotVoodoo” seems like a damn fine one to me. Ms. Smith, who claims to “still write with a feather” and faxes in her posts, has a great future as a domain name consultant.

And if Liz Smith can acquire domain name savvy, then this site's audience can use the Web more if presented with content that appeals to it.

The World Pays Off on Judgment

In 1998, I became general counsel of a start-up company (24/7 Media) in a new industry (Internet advertising). I was right-hand man to CEO Dave Moore, and advised the Board.

 Like all companies caught in the "no rules" wondrous bubble, we made strategic decisions we'd like to have back. But we made good ones as well, especially when our backs were pinned to the wall during the 3 year crash, and we were one of the few survivors from our peer group.

 I used to clunkily explain my role as "when we're facing a difficult situation and Dave asks 'what should we do now,' I'm good at helping him come up with the right answer." And then I had an "Aha !."

I read an essay by Judge Joseph McLaughlin, of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and former Dean of Fordham Law School, in which he wrote that he long ago learned that "the world pays off on judgment - not brilliance, knowledge, and not experience or compassion either, though a fair portion of all of these is essential to the exercise of good judgment."

 In a single, precise word, Judge McLaughlin captured why many brilliant people fail; they have bad judgment. I vowed to use this word to focus my thinking in all future critical situations. This vow was cemented a few days later when I read a WSJ article about the sacking of a Fortune 50 CEO; a board member discussed a situation that the CEO handled very poorly, and said that the Board could forgive a mistake, but what the CEO did showed bad judgment.

Over the remainder of my long tenure at 24/7, most of the blow-ups that I witnessed at other companies could usually be pinned on bad judgment, often at companies run by young CEOs who may have lacked "experience or compassion." Facebook keeps popping up in scandal lately. It has a 23yo CEO whose prescience in a critical decision - whether to accept lucrative offers to sell the company for much less than its current value - is almost overshadowed by some colossally bad decisions that can only be ascribed to bad judgment. Now I read that he has hired a 38yo COO from Google, and plans to hire other senior executives. No doubt all of them will be brimming with brilliance and knowledge. One can only hope these qualities will be supplemented with equal measures of experience and compassion, and that this young CEO will rely on their good judgment to put an end to the parade of poor decisions that has made his job so difficult lately.

Randy, Paula and Simon Pick the President

Ryan Seacrest: Welcome to the South Carolina auditions for the 2008... American....Idol !!!!

(McCain) Hello, I'm John McCain, and I'm a big fan of Barbara Streisand.

(Paula) That was like butter !!! You're voice is a velvet fog.

(Simon) Paula, you live in a velvet fog. Mr. McCain, it's one song per contestant. And shouldn't you sing something more suitable ?

(McCain) Well I like "Barbara Ann", but my mother told me not to sing that in public any more.

(Simon) Next !

(Hillary) Hi, I'm Hillary Rodham. Clinton. Rodham Clinton. Clinton. How y'all doing this morning ? I've found my new voice.

(Randy) Where are you from ?

(Hillary) Where do you want me to be from ? This song is about refocusing on the critical issues in this campaign, like, how do I win the nomination ?

(Paula) Terrific, Rodman. What were you trying to say ?

(Hillary) That we need to work together to defeat big business, which is that hammer thrower, dashing the dreams of working class people all over America.

(Randy) But it looked like the face in the screen represents big business ?

(Hillary) Oh. Well let's do it again, this time I'll be the hammer girl.

(Simon) No, I don't want to hear another word from you.

(Hillary) This is a vast right wing conspiracy !!

(Seacrest) Next !!

(Obama) My name is Barack Obama, and I'd like to sing a song for you.

(Randy) Barack, that was cool, you were keeping it real. But wasn't it a little too safe ?

(Obama) That's because anything I say just gives Clinton another chance to misrepresent who I am and what I believe in.

(Paula) We can't have contestants talking smack about other contestants !

(Simon) Right, only we talk smack about contestants.

(Obama) Well actually it wasn't Mrs. Clinton. It was her husband.

(Randy) Well which one of them is the contestant ?

(Obama) Tell me when you figure that out !

(Seacrest) We have one more, but he doesn't want to sing today. He says if the two finalists are really lame, then he'll enter the contest.

(Simon) He sings now or he's out !

(Seacrest) But he says he'll spend every penny he has to win.

(Randy) We can't be bought ! The people decide !!

(Seacrest) He has a trillion pennies.

(All judges) Well maybe we can work with him.

(Seacrest) But he actually only spent $100 a vote to win his last contest.

(All judges) Who does he think we are ?

(Seacrest) I'm not going to haggle with the man for you. In our out ?

(Randy) Isn't there one person who will give us a performance we can get behind ?

(Seacrest) We do have one more guy, but he also doesn't sing. He has nice background music, and he talks about why he's the candidate for change.

(Simon) For goodness sake....

(Seacret) He's taken on the bloated establishment and won, with a "give the people what they want" mantra. His "broken windows" theory is brilliant.

(Randy) Guiliani ?

(Seacrest) No, Rudy said he'd only audition in Florida. Look, I really think you're going to be wowed by this new guy, Mack.

(Simon) He can't be any worse than the crop we've seen tonight. Send him in.

(Seacrest) Judges, your American Idol for 2008 !!